"Lady Judith must have been losing at cards," said one. "There is an affectation in that arrogant mirth of hers which hides some secret agony." "She may have been backing race-horses at Newmarket," replied another. "I have heard her betting with Chesterfield." "Or she may have quarrelled with Lavendale," hazarded a cantankerous mother of three plain daughters. "What, is that affair begun again?" "It began the day he came back to England, I believe. They took up the story at the very page where they left off. The only difference was Mr. Topsparkle, and he seems the essence of good-nature." Durnford looked in late at the party, after a stormy sitting in the House, where Walpole was fighting for his Excise Bill, and he was astounded at beholding Lady Judith the centre of an adoring circle. He had left a Niobe, he found a Juno, flaming in all the glory of her peacock car. Mr. Topsparkle came on from Soho Square when he heard his wife had changed her mind and had gone to Lady Townley's. She could not be too frivolous or too expensive for his humour, though he drew the line at gambling debts. It was when she was grave that he suspected her. And he had suspected her the other night at Vauxhall. That disappearance in the dark walks with Lavendale had roused his ire, for at heart he had always been jealous of that old lover; and then under a feigned somnolence he had watched those two whispering together at the supper-table in the King's Head arbour, and he had made up his mind that there was mischief. He had hinted his suspicions to his wife that night after their return to Soho, and injured innocence had taken the most vehement form in that offended lady. Recriminations of the bitterest kind had followed: he had reproached her with her extravagance, her passion for dice, cards, lotteries, and race-horses; he had taunted her with the poverty of her girlhood, her concealed eagerness to trap a rich husband. "Was I eager for you?" she asked insultingly. "Did you not kneel at my feet, amidst the other dirt, before I would have you?" "O, you played your part cleverly," he answered; "you knew that a man of my stamp was to be won by seeming independence. You were too old a huckster not to know your market." "Sell me again," she cried, "if you think you bought me too dear! Sell me to the highest bidder. There is not a man in town to whom I would not sooner belong than to you." "To your old lover Lavendale, for instance." "Ay, to Lavendale. I would rather be his slave than your queen." "But I have not quite done with you yet. You had better be patient, and wait till you are my widow." The argument grew more and more acrimonious, and finally Mr. Topsparkle announced his intention of carrying off his wife to Ringwood. "You can play the queen there within narrower bounds," he said. "You mean that it will be easier to watch me?" "That is just what I mean. You are too wild a bird to fly without a string."