"My dear," said a neighbor, who had been to the club and was on his way home, as he entered the room where his wife was sitting, "I met Mrs. Whittaker just now. I never saw anything so remarkable." "Really! She's always rather remarkable in her dress, but how?" "I don't know, but it was white; it looked like a voluminous exaggerated nightgown." "Mrs. Whittaker in a nightgown, Charley? She must have been out of her mind, or was she walking in her sleep, do you think?" "Oh, no, I don't think she was; she was evidently going to the post-box, but her gown--'Pon my word, she looked like a dressed-up figure in a carnival." "Oh, she is quite mad," said the little wife; "they say she's very nice, but quite mad." Meanwhile, Regina, all unconscious of the strictures which had been passed upon her appearance, had gone back into Ye Dene, and lingered in the covered way adjusting a plant here and a leaf there, as if she had no higher object in life than the arrangement of her house. It happened that Alfred woke up as his wife gently closed the door behind her. "I thought Queenie was here. Dear me, it is quite chilly--what a fool I was to go to sleep here! I suppose it's a sign of old age." Then he stretched out one arm and then the other one. "I suppose I ought to write that letter to Jenkinson," was his next thought. So he heaved himself up out of his comfortable chair, picked up the art magazine, and sought his own little sanctum, which was behind the dining-room. There he wrote a letter of three lines making an appointment for the next morning, and then he too set off for the pillar-box. "Hullo! Queenie, are you here?" he exclaimed, as he saw the tall figure in the voluminous white draperies. "Walk up as far as the post with me." "Oh, are you going to the post?" she said. "I have just been. Yes, I will come with you, certainly." He opened the gate to let her pass out in front of him. "You won't take cold?" he said anxiously. "Oh, no, not a night like this." "I don't know," he remarked, as they sauntered up the pathway together, "that there is much protection in a frock like this." "It's not a frock, dear, it's a tea-gown." "Oh, is it?" "What the French call _saute de lit_." "It's flimsy. I don't know that I altogether like it," said Alfred, slipping his hand under her arm. "It has the advantage of being cool," said Regina. "Yes, I daresay it is cool, but this kind of gown makes you look--" He wobbled his hand about to express something that was not very clear to either of them. "I know, it makes me look too fat," said Regina in quite a crushed tone. "I am _too_ fat." "Oh, I don't know--you're just comfortable." "No, Alfred, I'm too fat," Regina reiterated with an air of firm conviction. "Well, as to that," said Alfred, slipping the letter into the letter-box, and wheeling round, still keeping hold of his wife's arm, "I never did admire the 'two-deal-board' style of woman myself."