"I am afraid, my dear (speaking of course in strictest confidence), that she is not quite a straightforward person." "I hardly know any one I consider quite straightforward, myself," answered Mrs. Jones calmly. "What has she done?" "I think you are making rather a sweeping assertion, my dear," he said, eyeing with a momentary misgiving a roast duck; it looked overdone. "Never mind my assertions, but tell me what that poor thing has done?" "Why do you say that _poor_ thing? I really do not see why she is to be pitied." "Don't you? well I do. Do you call the life she leads a proper life for a young creature accustomed probably to all the freedom of a country life in Scotland? I often think of her, and I declare sometimes I should like to force my way into that dismal house, and take her and her child out of it." Mrs. Jones spoke with a vehemence quite surprising to her husband. "Really, my dear," he said, "the rapid conclusions you arrive at are ... bewildering to my slower mode of thought. You have seen Mrs. Drayton once, and you are ready immediately to credit her with weariness, and the house is a substantial house and very well furnished, and...." "Do you suppose curtains and carpets can make a woman happy?" asked Mrs. Jones, severely. "They do something towards it, I think, judging from your own great anxiety upon the subject." Mr. Jones had some reason for this statement. "All I have to say is that that poor young creature's heart is broken--yes, broken. I never saw any one so thoroughly and utterly miserable as she is." Mr. Jones was startled but not convinced. "I saw her the other day, though not to speak to," Mr. Jones went on. "She went to Skidd's, and I was going in also, but as _you_ objected to my being mixed up with her I drew back. A friend of hers happened to go there on business, and she welcomed him, and I saw her face, and its expression has haunted me ever since." "As you saw her out with your own eyes, you can understand that when she talks of never going out that is not a perfectly true statement," and Mr. Jones, who was longing to have his own slight misgivings set at rest by his wife, took off his spectacles, rubbed imaginary specs off their polished surface, and replaced them. "One swallow does not make a summer," said Mrs. Jones, with as much contempt in her meaning as she thought befitting. "It is a fact known to every one here that she has only been seen once, and that she is kept exactly as though the Limes was a prison and her husband a jailer." "Really, my dear, in these days such expressions are quite absurd." "Their being absurd does not make them false, and I trust that if you can in any way help that poor thing you will." "If she went out once she can do so again." "Not at all a certainty; she may have managed it once, and yet because she did so it may be made impossible for her."