"Ah, I thought you'd say that. No question of handing them over to the girls, eh?" "I should think not indeed. Why, darling boy, you must have given a fortune for them." He slipped the tippet over her head and kissed her at the same time. "Not too much for you, Queenie, but they did cost, well, a penny or two, but it was a bargain all the same. Now, put your hands in the muff and look at yourself." "Oh, Alfred--oh, Alfred, you do love me?" said Regina. "Love you! Ever have cause to doubt it?" he asked quite sharply. Regina was almost choked by her emotion. The psychic moment had arrived for her to make her confession, to tell him all her doubts and fears, all her efforts to make herself lovely in his eyes. "My Alfred, my noble Alfred," she exclaimed, flinging her arms round his neck and clasping the muff against his head. She was on the point of saying, "I _have_ something to tell you," but she hesitated, in a manner unusual with her, for a choice of words. In the rush of gratitude she almost let slip that she had something to confess when the door opened, and Maudie, followed by her husband, came into the room. "Furs! Dark sables! Darling, daddy _has_ been opening his heart to you." "Daddy's heart is always open to me," said Regina. CHAPTER XXXI REGINA SETS FOOT ON THE DOWN GRADE There is a great deal of wisdom in the old saying "Truth will out." Somehow those sables served to put Regina further from her husband instead of drawing her nearer to him. I'm sure that Alfred Whittaker himself would have been shocked had he known the effect that his gift had upon his spouse. Every day--nay, every hour tended to confirm her belief that the hussy she had seen dining with Alfred at the Trocadero had complete ascendancy over him, and yet those sables stopped her time after time from broaching the subject to him. They were, so to speak, a sop in the pot, and whenever Regina was on the point of laying her hand on Alfred's shoulder and saying to him, plump and straight, "Alfred, is your heart still mine?" a vision of dark sables seemed to rise up and choke the very words in her throat. Most women would love to have a danger-signal in the shape of dark sables, rich and elegant, soft and cosy, at once luxurious and comforting, but there were times when Regina almost hated her sables because they seemed to have raised an extra barrier between herself and Alfred. "Mother," said Julia, one morning, when Regina was about to leave the house on one of her strictly-personal expeditions, "are you going to Dr. Money-Berry again?" "Yes, dear, I am. Why?" "Do you think he is doing very much good?" "Oh, I do, indeed! I consider that he has set me free, body and soul, from the burden that I used to carry about with me." "Oh--you mean--fat, darling? Don't you think it suits you to be a little fat?" "I don't think it suits anybody to be fat," said Regina, with the enthusiasm of the recent convert.