The dinner, in its old-fashioned way, had been really excellent, for Kate Rigby was a notable housewife; but not even that fact, nor the equally excellent champagne--for Matthew Rigby was too shrewd a man to drink bad wine--had had the effect of brightening the little party, and a certain constraint now sat on the four people who were linked so closely together. The host, a man of equable temperament, felt faintly uncomfortable; as he looked from one to the other, he told himself that something was wrong. His brother-in-law was certainly oddly unlike himself, yet surely David Banfield was too sensible, and by this time too well accustomed to his sister's ways, to have taken offence at anything she might have said concerning the well-worn subject of Brew House domestic difficulties. Mrs. Rigby was also unnaturally silent, and during the long course of the meal she uttered none of the sharp pungent sayings with which she generally enlivened each one of her husband's repasts and which, it must be admitted, never to him lost their savour. Last, but not least, Miss Wellow, whose flowered muslin gown was as much too youthful as that of her hostess was too old, seemed more sentimental and more foolish than usual. Mr. Rigby told himself with much satisfaction that his Kate had certainly worn better than Tiddy Wellow. And yet----? Yet, twenty-five years ago, Tiddy had been such a pretty girl! Soft and round, with dewy brown eyes and pink dimpled cheeks. She still had the appealing, inconsequent manner which, so charming in a girl, is apt to be absurd in a woman--and then she had grown stout! Mr. Rigby liked a woman to have a neat trim figure--his Kate had kept hers--but Tiddy. Alas! Tiddy had not been so fortunate. So it was that Mr. Rigby paid poor Miss Wellow but little attention, regarding her with a curious mixture of affectionate contempt and respect, the former due to his knowledge of her character, and the latter to his knowledge of her very considerable fortune. Even to such a man as Matthew Rigby,--that is, to a man whose profession implies the constant hearing of family secrets, and the coming across of strange, almost inconceivable human occurrences,--the melancholy domestic story of David Banfield remained painfully vivid. On him had fallen all the arrangements which had finally resulted in the divorce, and, unlike his wife, he had sometimes doubted the wisdom of what he and she had brought about, for Banfield, left to himself, would never have severed the legal tie between himself and the mother of his child.