Mrs. Meeks was sensitive. That was evident in every line of her softly rounded face, but the red lips that were curved in Cupid's bow could straighten and stiffen when she was roused into one of her rare moods of determination. Mr. Meeks called these moods "tantrums," although his wife always spoke low and never lost her good manners. She had been reared by a grandmother who was one of the last of the Southern dames of the _ancien régime_, and would have died before she would have condescended to a rough and vulgar quarrel. It was the opposite trait in Mr. Meeks that hurt her. He was inclined to quarrel on slight occasion. He had not the least idea of his defect of temper; it was always clear to him that he was in the right, and people who differed from him were wrong. They quarreled with him. If people would do what they were told, he would never have cause to get out of humor. This lordliness of tone did not set ill on a man presiding at town meetings, and explaining to badly informed clients the intricacies of law. In these cases, suavity and a fine, melodious voice were the decent coverings of an egotism that wore less disguise when he was laying down the law to the little woman at home. It had been only an agreeable sort of masterfulness in the courting days. Then it had seemed to the romantic girl that yielding her will to a tender, protecting lover gave to their relation a delightful exclusiveness, as contrasted with other relations. But in three years she had learned that what from one point of view is agreeable authority, becomes from another point of view distasteful restraint. Besides, the fiber of the American woman which yields sweetly to suggestions of warmer wraps and the reserving of dances, is less compliant under complaints of neglected hose or bad management of fuel. Still, one could conceive of a demeanor that would have deprived even such fault-finding of its sting. But the most tender wifely forbearance will bristle with resentment when such a slight matter as a wrongly folded white tie calls forth allusions to a blissful and ante-marital condition in which hired landladies were attentive to a man's comfort; and above all, when ill-humor allows itself the parting shot from the doorway of a muttered "darned fool." Mrs. Meeks had watched her stout, well-set-up husband drive away behind his handsome bay horses to his office in town, and then fallen into an unpleasant fit of meditation over her morning task of putting the sitting-room in order. The suggestion of Cupid's bow had entirely disappeared by the time she had mentally reviewed the whole situation, and her mouth was, as the old black servant secretly observed as she entered, "set for a fight." "Ef ever Mis' Linda gits her back up onc't, that air Englishman better look out for hisse'f," old Rose had confided to a confidential friend. "I knows the Fitzhugh blood. It won't bear much puttin' upon, now I tells you."