He had thought her soulless, a pretty, light-hearted, unselfish little comrade, swayed by feminine whims and caprices, but incapable of rising to the stature of the perfect woman; and lo, in one moment of unconscious revelation she had shown herself to him as a woman indeed, one who had realized that he had married her for some other cause than love, yet did not stoop to blame him. But if Toni were indeed a woman, one capable, moreover, of a totally unexpected magnanimity, he had indeed been guilty of a serious mistake, and the very idea that he had misread Toni's character so hopelessly filled Owen with a humility as disturbing as it was complete. CHAPTER XXI The immediate effect of the little scene at the breakfast table was unfortunately that of an increased intimacy between Toni Rose and Herrick's wife. Although Toni's exit from the battlefield had been quiet and even dignified, she found it hard to forgive Owen's plain-speaking on the subject of what he supposed to be her silly prejudice against Miss Loder. He had called her conduct vulgar and ungenerous, had spoken, moreover, in the tone in which a harsh schoolmaster might censure a naughty child; and all her love for Owen could not prevent a feeling of humiliation which galled her sorely. The sight of Miss Loder, trim, competent, complacent, acted upon Toni's nerves in much the same way as the red rag is said to act on the nervous system of a bull. Although she dared not give vent openly to her dislike, Toni's behaviour towards her husband's secretary was by no means cordial; and Owen felt a slightly bitter resentment against his young wife for what he considered her most unreasonable inability to understand his position. Millicent Loder was a god-send to a harassed literary man; and yet Owen began to wonder whether after this book were done it would be advisable to dispense with her services. That, however, seemed unfair to the girl, who liked her work with him, and would consider her dismissal uncalled for; and Owen generally finished his mental discussion with a resolution to ignore Toni's foolishness and trust to time to teach her toleration. It must be remembered that neither Toni nor her husband had the slightest notion of what lay beneath Miss Loder's calm exterior. Envy of Toni as Rose's wife, scorn of her as the mistress of a beautiful and stately house, mingled in Millicent's breast with a strong and unreasonable longing to attract Toni's husband to herself; and the very fact that the marriage of these two was not what she called a success, lent additional keenness to all her emotions. Oddly enough, Mrs. Herrick saw Millicent in something very like her true light, with a vision even clearer than that of the more interested Toni; and Eva Herrick, who since her imprisonment hated all men and most women, was not ill-pleased by the spectacle of Toni's dislike for her husband's secretary.