His manner of playful intimacy conveyed the impression that the secret understanding between them did not include Gabriella's husband. George was an outsider, but this hideous old man, with his curious repelling suggestion of over-ripeness, as of fruit that is beginning to rot at the core, was the dominant personality in her mind at the moment. She wondered if he knew how repulsive he was, and while she wondered, the judge, unaware of his tragic plight, went on eating lobster with unimpaired relish. His importance, founded upon a more substantial basis than mere personal attraction, had risen superior not only to morality, but to the outward failings of the flesh. Had he been twice as repulsive, she realized that his millions would have commanded a respect denied to both beauty and virtue. "I wonder how any woman can stand him," mused Gabriella. Then, glancing across the table at Mrs. Crowborough, she realized something of the amazing insensibility of the more ethereal sex. No man, not even in the last extremity, could have loved a woman as ugly as Judge Crowborough was. The roughest man would have had sufficient esthetic sense to have been shocked into revolt; yet a woman, a refined and intelligent woman, had married the judge and survived it. She appeared now, not only expressionless and unrevolted, but filled with a healthy zest for social reforms and the spiritual welfare of girl orphans. "Well, I've learned something of life to-night," thought Gabriella while she watched her. Later in the evening, when she passed into the drawing-room, with Mrs. Crowborough, bleak, unbending, and trailing her chains of jet, she comforted herself again with the reflection that what she was "seeing" might not be particularly exciting, "but it was life." On a short, hard sofa near the fire, beside Fatty, who bloomed like a white rose under the red-shaded light, she listened to Mrs. Fowler's unflagging efforts to "get on" with the judge's wife. Never had the dauntless little woman revealed more surprising resourcefulness, never had she talked so vivaciously, never had she appeared so relentlessly pleasant. It was as if she said in the face of Mrs. Crowborough's insensibility, which was the insensibility not of mind, but of inanimate matter, "Whatever you do, you can't keep me from being sweet." And in this strained sweetness there was something touching, something wistful, a hint of inner weariness which showed now and then beneath the restless vivacity. "Isn't it funny," said Patty suddenly, "how much mamma cares about things that don't matter at all? You wouldn't believe it to look at her, but she is in her heart the most worldly one of the family. Father wouldn't give a tallow candle for anything that isn't real."