But how it was funny! My wife did not take me into her confidence as to her social struggles. She maintained with me the same sweet, elegant exterior of spiritual placidity with which she faced the rest of the world. Nevertheless, in a dim sort of way I had some notion of what she was about--though, as I was presently to discover, I was wholly mistaken in my idea of her progress. “What has happened to Mrs. Lestrange?” I said to her one evening at dinner. “Is she ill?” She cast a quick, nervous glance in the direction of the butler. I, looking at him by way of a mirror, thought I saw upon his aristocratic countenance a faint trace of that insolent secret glee which fills servants when their betters are humiliated before them. “Mrs. Lestrange?” she said carelessly. “Oh, I see her now and then.” “But you’ve been inseparable until lately,” said I. “A quarrel, I suppose?” “Not at all,” said my wife tartly. And she shifted abruptly to another subject. When I went to the little study adjoining my sitting room to smoke she came with me. There she said: “Please don’t mention Mrs. Lestrange before the servants again.” “Why, what’s up?” said I. “Did she turn out to be a crook?” “Heavens, no! How coarse you are, Godfrey. Simply that I was terribly mistaken in her.” “She looked like a confidence woman or a madam,” said I. “Didn’t you tell me she was a howling swell?” “I thought she was,” said my wife, and I knew something important was coming; only that theory would account for her admitting she had made a mistake. “And in a way she was. But they caught her several years ago taking money to get some dreadful low Western people into society. Since then she’s asked--she herself--because she’s well connected and amusing. But she can’t help anyone else.” “Oh, I see,” said I. “And you don’t feel strong enough socially as yet to be able to afford the luxury of her friendship.” “Strong enough!” said Edna with intense bitterness. “I have no position at all--none whatever.” I was surprised, for until that moment I had been assuming she was on or near the top of the wave, moving swiftly toward triumphant success. “You want too much,” said I. “You’ve really got all there is to get. At that last reception of yours you had all the heavy swells. My valet told me so.” “Reception to raise funds for the orphanage,” said Edna with a vicious sneer--the unloveliest expression I had ever seen on her lovely face--and I had seen not a few unlovely expressions there in our many married years, some of them extremely trying years. “I tell you I am nobody socially. They take my money for their rotten old charities. They use me for their tiresome church work--and they do nothing for me--nothing! How I _hate_ them!”