“Are the people any nicer on Sundays than they are on other days?” Lady Barb asked from the depths of her chair and without looking up from a stiff little book. He waited ever so briefly before answering. “I don’t know whether they are, but I think you might be.” “I’m as nice as I know how to be. You must take me as I am. You knew when you married me that I wasn’t American.” Jackson stood before the fire toward which his wife’s face was turned and her feet extended; stood there some time with his hands behind him and his eyes dropped a little obliquely on Lady Barb’s bent head and richly-draped figure. It may be said without delay that he was sore of soul, and it may be added that he had a double cause. He knew himself on the verge of the first crisis that had occurred between himself and his wife—the reader will note that it had occurred rather promptly—and he was annoyed at his annoyance. A glimpse of his state of mind before his marriage has been given the reader, who will remember that at that period our young man had believed himself lifted above possibilities of irritation. When one was strong one wasn’t fidgety, and a union with a species of calm goddess would of course be a source of repose. Lady Barb was a calm, was an even calmer goddess still, and he had a much more intimate view of her divinity than on the day he had led her to the altar; but I’m not sure he felt either as firm or as easy. “How do you know what people are?” he said in a moment. “You’ve seen so few; you’re perpetually denying yourself. If you should leave New York to-morrow you’d know wonderfully little about it.” “It’s all just the same,” she pleaded. “The people are all exactly alike. There’s only one sort.” “How can you tell? You never see them.” “Didn’t I go out every night for the first two months we were here?” “It was only to about a dozen houses—those, I agree, always the same; people, moreover, you had already met in London. You’ve got no general impressions.” She raised her beautiful blank face. “That’s just what I _have_ got; I had them before I came. I see no difference whatever. They’ve just the same names—just the same manners.” Again for an instant Jackson hung fire; then he said with that practised flat candour of which mention has already been made and which he sometimes used in London during his courtship: “Don’t you like it over here?” Lady Barb had returned to her book, but she looked up again. “Did you expect me to like it?” “I hoped you would, of course. I think I told you so.” “I don’t remember. You said very little about it; you seemed to make a kind of mystery. I knew of course you expected me to live here, but I didn’t know you expected me to like it.” “You thought I asked of you the sacrifice, as it were.” “I’m sure I don’t know,” said Lady Barb. She got up from her chair and tossed her unconsolatory volume into the empty seat. “I recommend you to read that book,” she added. “Is it interesting?”