Vivian had permitted himself the latitude of secret fault-finding, and from this to the next step it was easy. Their first quarrel came within a week. The wonder is not that it came so soon, but that it was deferred so long. Yet, the immediate cause was absurdly trivial. They had arranged to drive to Clairmont and lunch in company with some friends of Vivian. But when the morning came he felt averse to carrying out the program. Perhaps his head ached, or he had slept ill, or the discovery that his trunk key was missing annoyed him unduly. But anyway he was out of tone. One o'clock found him stretched out on the couch in their room yawning discontentedly over the _Herald_. Amanda, flitting about, suddenly became aware when her toilet was half made that he had not begun to get ready. "If you don't hurry up I'll go off and leave you--lazy fellow!" she cried. "They talk about women being always the ones to keep people waiting. I'm sure it's the other way. I'm always ready for everything before you." "I'm not going," said Vivian abruptly, directing a scowl toward the wall paper. They had now been married eight days. A certain French author, renowned for his biting epigrams, remarks: "I do not believe there ever was a marriage in the world, even the union of a tiger and a panther, which would not pretend to perfect happiness for at least fifteen days after the marriage ceremony." In this case was neither tiger nor panther; only a young man who had always lorded it prettily over the women in his family, and a girl who had been brought up to expect much deference. Perhaps in France it might have taken fifteen days for the glamour to wear off. But in America emotions exhaust themselves rapidly. Amanda, standing with one gloved hand stretched out before her, seemingly intent upon fastening the buttons, had begun to reflect. "You ain't well," she observed coldly. "Probably you ate too much pie last night." Now, among the trifles that grate upon the masculine mind, is having an indisposition referred to gastronomic indulgence. At such times a man is apt to consider that a wife but poorly replaces a mother. "Amanda, I wish you would learn that all varieties of pastry don't come under the head of 'pie.' And I wish you wouldn't say 'ain't.' It's deucedly countrified." "Oh," said Amanda. She deliberately took off her gloves and hat, and sat down upon an ottoman near the couch. Her color had arisen, and her black eyes had an ominous sparkle. "Is there anything else you wish?" She asked this aggressively. Her tone suggested that she had not forgotten that episode of the fight in the barn that lay a dozen years back. She was quite as ready to stand upon the defensive now as she had been then. But when women stand sentinel their guns go off inadvertently.