Sir Arthur remembered. But the proposition was none the less absurd. That Lady Gerardine, too delicate to be able to remain with him—with him, Sir Arthur, the Lieutenant-Governor, at a moment when a hostess was eminently needed at Government House—should be taking into her calculations the claims of so unimportant a personality as that of poor dead and gone English, was, for all his consciously punctilious chivalry towards his predecessor’s shade, a piece of irritating feminine perversity that positively stank in Sir Arthur’s nostrils. He snorted. For a moment, indeed, he was really angry. And the sharpness of his first exclamation brought the blood racing to Aspasia’s cheeks. She hesitated on the point of interference. But the invalid’s unruffled demeanour made no demand upon assistance. Suddenly realising himself the unfitness of his tone towards a neurasthenic patient of highly sensitive organisation, Sir Arthur dropped from loud indignation to his usual indulgent pitch: "See, my love, how perverse you are. First, when it seemed a mere matter of justice to poor English’s memory and could have been accomplished with a very trifling expenditure of trouble, you were opposed to the matter. And now, when, as Sir James says, it is so important for you to have absolute rest, to put even your ordinary correspondence on one side, you tell me, childishly, that it is my wish you should _work_! I hope, I hope," said Sir Arthur, appealing to space, "that I am not an unreasonable man." "I was wrong," said Lady Gerardine; "I do not intend to do it because it was your wish, but because it is now mine." Once again Sir Arthur paused for want of the phrase that would lit his sense of the extraordinary attitude of his wife and yet not induce any recurrence of the dreaded symptoms. Then a brilliant solution of the difficulty flashed across his mind. "I will write and inform Major Bethune of the necessary postponement of the whole affair. And now, not a word more." Lady Gerardine smiled, but it was with lips that were growing pale. "I have myself written to Major Bethune," said she. "It is all settled. He will be travelling by our boat and will come to me at Saltwoods as soon as I am ready for him." She sank a fraction deeper among her cushions as she spoke, and a blue shade gathered about her mouth and nostrils. Aspasia scrambled to her feet in time to arrest the storm that was threatening in clouds upon her uncle’s brow. "For Heaven’s sake," she cried, "hold your tongue and go away, Runkle. You’ll kill her!" She dived for the smelling-salts and shrieked for Jani. "Good gracious," she rated him, holding the bottle with pink, shaky fingers to the waxen nostrils, "after all the doctors said, and everything!" Sir Arthur retired, remarkably crestfallen, to his study. How was a man to exercise the proper marital control upon the marble-white obstinacy of a fainting woman?