"Then she'd have a reprieve, and I'd have done a good deed. You can't seriously have begun yet, and this is so deadly important. You might spare five minutes to instruct your poor wife." Grizel perched herself on the corner of the table, and tilted the boudoir cap at a beguiling angle. Martin stood with his back to the fire and adopted a professorial air. "Lard," he said sententiously, "is a substance compounded of a whitey grease, contained for the purposes of trade in balloons or bladders of skins--" Grizel's face showed a network of horrified lines. "How exceedingly disagreeable! I shall certainly _not_ allow it... And what is dripping?" "Dripping is, er--brown! So called because it drips from the meat in the process of cooking. It is inferior to lard, and aspires to no bladder, but lives in odd receptacles, such as jam jars. It is supposed to supply an unconquerable temptation to a plain cook, and there are fiends in the shape of men, who are said to spend their life tempting cooks to sell the dripping. Katrine used to see dripping in the eye of every unknown man who opened the gate. I never heard her make any allegations about lard. Does that distinction afford you any illumination?" Grizel sighed, and turned to the door with an air of resignation. "Well, good-bye, my loved one! Be very good to me, for you won't have me long. If I've got to order meals, I shall never be able to eat them. I foresee that. I never heard so much about grease in my life. Is there nothing decent one could use instead?" Martin hesitated. "I believe--sometimes--butter!" Grizel waved a triumphant hand. "Of course! Butter! Why couldn't you have said that before? Nice, clean, fresh butter. I'll tell her I allow _nothing_ else. What a fuss over nothing! ... Martin, you're wearing a green tie. I've never seen you in green before... Darling! you're adorable in green..." CHAPTER FOUR. GRIZEL AT HOME. It was the afternoon of Grizel Beverley's first "At Home" celebration. The drawing-room had been made ready for the occasion with the aid of what seemed to Martin a very army of workmen, and, as Grizel pointed out triumphantly, it looked as if it had been lived in for generations. Not a single new object marred the mellowed perfection of the whole. Old cabinets stood outlined against white walls, the floor was bare of the superfluity of little tables and flower-stands which characterise so many bride's apartments; with one striking exception the general effect was austere in tone. The exception was found in a deep recess, on one side of the fire-place, the walls of which were hung with a gorgeous Chinese embroidery which made a feast of colour against the surrounding white and brown, and proclaimed to an understanding eye that the mistress of the house had appropriated the favoured niche for her own use.