De Courcy Smyth was close beside her. Poppy set her lips together and braced herself to endure the coming wretchedness. It was some years since she had had speech of him--some years, indeed, since she had seen him, save during that brief moment, twenty-four hours previously, as she descended the steps of Cedar Lodge. Even in his most prosperous days he had been unattractive in person, at once untidy and theatrical in dress. Now Poppy registered a distinct deterioration in his appearance. His puffy face, red-rimmed eyes, and shambling gait were odious to her. She noted, moreover, that he was poorly clad. His grey felt hat was stained and greasy; his ginger-coloured frieze overcoat threadbare at the elbows, thin and stringy in the skirts. The soles of his brown boots were splayed, the upper leathers seamed and cracked. This might denote poverty. It might, also, only denote carelessness and sloth. In any case, it failed to move her to pity, provoking in her uncontrollable irritation; so that, forgetful of diplomacy, stirred by memories of innumerable kindred provocations in the past, Poppy spoke without preamble, asking him sharply as he joined her: "Have you no better clothes than that?" Smyth paused before answering, looking her up and down furtively yet deliberately, wiping the wet of his beard and face, meanwhile, with a frayed green silk pocket-handkerchief. "It offends your niceness that your husband should dress like a tramp, does it?" he said hoarsely. "And pray whose fault is it that he is reduced to doing so? Judging by your own costume, you can easily remove that cause of offence if you choose. It does not occur to you, perhaps, that while you live on the fat of the land I, but for the charity of strangers--which it is loathsome to me to accept--should not have enough to pay for the food I eat or for the detestable garret in which I both work and sleep? Under these circumstances I am scarcely prepared to call in a fashionable tailor to replenish my wardrobe, lest its meagreness should, on the very rare occasions on which I have the honour of meeting you, offer an unpleasing reflection upon your own super-elegance."