“Oh!” said Mrs. Brookenham. “Are you very sure?” she then demanded. He had got up and put his empty cup back on the tea-table, wandering afterwards a little about the room and looking out, as his wife had done half an hour before, at the dreary rain and the now duskier ugliness. He reverted in this attitude, with a complete unconsciousness of making for irritation, to an issue they might be supposed to have dropped. “He’ll have a lovely drive for his money!” His companion, however, said nothing and he presently came round again. “No, I’m not absolutely sure--of his having had it from Mitchy. If I were I should do something.” “What would you do?” She put it as if she couldn’t possibly imagine. “I’d speak to him.” “To Harold?” “No--that might just put it into his head.” Brookenham walked up and down a little with his hands in his pockets, after which, with a complete concealment of the steps of the transition, “Where are we dining to-night?” he brought out. “Nowhere, thank heaven. We grace our own board.” “Oh--with those fellows, as you said, and Jane?” “That’s not for dinner. The Baggers and Mary Pinthorpe and--upon my word I forget.” “You’ll see when she comes,” suggested Brookenham, who was again at the window. “It isn’t a she--it’s two or three he’s, I think,” his wife replied with her indifferent anxiety. “But I don’t know what dinner it is,” she bethought herself; “it may be the one that’s after Easter. Then that one’s this one,” she added with her eyes once more on her book. “Well, it’s a relief to dine at home”--and Brookenham faced about. “Would you mind finding out?” he asked with some abruptness. “Do you mean who’s to dine?” “No, that doesn’t matter. But whether Mitchy HAS come down.” “I can only find out by asking him.” “Oh _I_ could ask him.” He seemed disappointed at his wife’s want of resource. “And you don’t want to?” He looked coldly, from before the fire, over the prettiness of her brown bent head. “It will be such a beastly bore if he admits it.” “And you think poor I can make him not admit it?” She put the question as if it were really her own thought too, but they were a couple who could, even face to face and unlike the augurs behind the altar, think these things without laughing. “If he SHOULD admit it,” Mrs. Brookenham threw in, “will you give me the money?” “The money?” “To pay Mitchy back.” She had now raised her eyes to her husband, but, turning away, he failed to meet them. “He’ll deny it.” “Well, if they all deny it,” she presently remarked, “it’s a simple enough matter. I’m sure _I_ don’t want them to come down on us! But that’s the advantage,” she almost prattled on, “of having so many such charming friends. They DON’T come down.” This again was a remark of a sweep that there appeared to be nothing in Brookenham’s mind to match; so that, scarcely pausing in the walk he had resumed, he only said: “Who do you mean by ‘all’?”