‘Or several other men!’ he put in, taking her fan from her hand and beginning to wave it to and fro. She laughed. ‘Perhaps! How jealous you are! Do you treat your wife to these sort of sarcasms?’ ‘I wish you wouldn’t talk about my wife,’ he said pettishly. ‘My wife and I have nothing in common.’ ‘Really!’ Lily Brancewith yawned slightly. ‘How often that happens in married life, doesn’t it? She is here to-night, isn’t she?’ ‘Yes, she is in the rooms somewhere,’ and Carlyon began to look decidedly cross. ‘She was quite the centre of attraction till you came in. Then, of course, it was a case of a small star paling before the full moon in all her splendour!’ ‘How sweetly poetical! But please don’t break my fan,’ and she took the delicate toy in question from him. ‘It cost twenty guineas, and it isn’t paid for yet.’ ‘Let me settle the bill,’ said Carlyon, looking adoringly into her eyes, ‘or any amount of bills!’ A faint tremor ran through Delicia’s body, as though a cold wind were playing on her nerves. Bending a little forward, she listened more intently. ‘Generous man!’ laughed Lady Brancewith. ‘I know your wife has made you rich, but I remember the time when you were not a bit flush of money, were you, poor boy! But you were always very nice and very complimentary, even then.’ ‘Glad you admit it,’ said Carlyon, drawing a little nearer to her. ‘The memory of it may decide you not to throw me over now!’ ‘What nonsense you talk!’ and Lady Brancewith gave him her hand to hold. ‘I want to see your wife; do introduce me to her! I have often been on the point of meeting her, but never have done so. _She_ doesn’t know the people I know, and _I_ don’t know the people she knows, so we’ve always missed each other. She is such a genius! Dunce as you are, you must have sense enough to be very proud of her!’ Carlyon looked dubious. Then he suddenly said,— ‘Well, I don’t know! I think a clever woman—a writer of books, you know, like my wife—is a mistake. She is always _unsexed_.’ As the word passed his lips, Delicia rose, pale, fair and calm in her glistening robes, and confronted them. Like an austere white angel suddenly descended from heaven to earth she stood,—quite silent,—looking straight at her husband and his companion with such a grand scorn in her dark violet eyes as made Carlyon shrink within himself like a beaten hound. Lady Brancewith glanced up at her with a half-impertinent, half-questioning smile, but not a word did Delicia utter. One moment she stood surveying the disloyal, ungracious and ungrateful churl who owed all he possessed in the world to her tenderness and bounty; then coldly, quietly, and with an unshaken grace of bearing and queenliness of movement, she turned away, her soft satin train sweeping them by as she moved forward into the crowded rooms and disappeared. ‘Who was that wonderful-looking woman?’ asked Lady Brancewith, eagerly. Carlyon flushed, anon grew deadly pale.