“Oh, don’t you see?” cried his wife, “they’re merely asking you because you’re my husband. It’s humiliating.” “Nonsense!” replied Edward, laughing. “And if they are, what do I care?--I’m not so thin-skinned as that. Mrs. Branderton was very nice to me the other Sunday; it would be funny if we didn’t accept.” “Did you think she was nice? Didn’t you see that she was patronising you as if you were a groom. It made me boil with rage. I could hardly hold my tongue.” Edward laughed again. “I never noticed anything. It’s just your fancy, Bertha.” “I’m not going to her horrid dinner-party.” “Then I shall go by myself,” he replied, laughing. Bertha turned white; it was as if she had received a sudden blow; but he was laughing, of course he did not mean what he said. She hurriedly agreed to all he asked. “Of course if you want to go, Eddie, I’ll come too.... It was only for your sake that I did not wish to.” “We must be neighbourly. I want to be friends with everybody.” She sat on the side of his chair, putting her arm round his neck. Edward patted her hand and she looked at him with eyes full of eager love, she bent down and kissed his hair. How foolish had been her sudden thought that he did not love her! But Bertha had another reason for not wishing to go to Mrs. Branderton. She knew Edward would be bitterly criticised, and the thought made her wretched; they would talk of his appearance and manner, and wonder how they got on together. Bertha understood well enough the position Edward occupied in Leanham; the Brandertons and their like, knowing him all his life, had treated him as a mere acquaintance: for them he had been a person to whom you are civil, and that is all. This was the first occasion upon which he had been dealt with entirely as an equal; it was his introduction into what Mrs. Branderton was pleased to call the upper ten of Leanham. It did indeed make Bertha’s blood boil; and it cut her to the heart to think that for years he had been used in so infamous a fashion: he did not seem to mind. “If I were he,” she said, “I’d rather die than go. They’ve ignored him always, and now they take him up as a favour to me.” But Edward appeared to have no pride; of course his character was charming, and he could bear ill will to no one. He neither resented the former neglect of the Brandertons nor their present impertinence. “I wish I could make him understand.”