Meantime, "Bunny" scowled on his frivolous little wife, and then gave her a sentimental smile. He was always torn between love and propriety, for Lady Frith, imitating Dora, as Lady Jim averred, said the most exasperating things in a sweet treble. He used to lecture her in private and explain what she should say; but these corrections always ended in tears on the part of the child-wife, and in complete surrender on the part of her doting husband. Lady Frith certainly could play her part in society excellently well on occasions, and was more shrewd than would have been guessed from her baby face and infantile manners. But she wanted to be original, and therefore plagiarised from Dickens' novel. This assumption of an imaginary character she called "possessing a personality." Mrs. Penworthy was old wine in a new bottle: that is, she looked twenty-five, and acted like an experienced coquette of double the age. Married to a modern Job, called Freddy, whose meekness was proverbial, she led him about like a pet lamb and taught him a few parlor tricks, so that people might say, "What an attached couple"; which they did, tongue in cheek. A sweet look from Mrs. Penworthy warmed Freddy's heart for four and twenty hours, even though the cost of the merest glance sometimes ran into double figures. In his hours of leisure, which were few, he frequently told her that she was an angel; but the expression did not sound so agreeable on Freddy's lips, as on those of the half dozen nice boys who constituted her court. She went everywhere and knew everyone, and did the things she ought not to have done, with discretion. Freddy thought her a playful kitten, quite blind to the fact that she had grown rapidly into a cat. But with smiling looks and sheathed claws, and Freddy's diamonds on her neck, she was a very pretty cat, and blinked sleepily at those who admired her, so long as Freddy gave her a silken cushion to rest on and plenty of cream to drink. Moreover, she only scratched those who could not scratch back. "I really think it's awful fun," said Mrs. Penworthy to her court--"all this sort of thing, you know--holly and snow and----" "And mistletoe," suggested one of the nice boys. "Now if you talk like that, Algy, you shan't be spoken to for a week." "A look is enough for me," whispered the adoring Algy. "Naughty! What would Freddy say?" Lady Canvey's sharp ears overheard the banter. "Were I Freddy I know what I'd say," she murmured grimly; then aloud, to spoil sport, "Is your husband here, Mrs. Penworthy?" "Freddy? Oh, dear me, no. He's gone to Paris, or Peru, or--I forget exactly where--but it's something beginning with a 'P.' Dear Freddy," she laid an entirely useless fan on her lips, pensively, "he works so very, very hard." "And quite right too," said Lady Canvey, bluntly, "seeing what a devoted wife he has." "Ah, you don't know how Freddy tries me, dear Lady Canvey. I _am_ devoted--that I am. But, you see, I took Freddy for better or worse."