‘But don’t you see how they mistake the position?’ exclaimed Valdis, impetuously. ‘Don’t you see that they are giving your husband all the honour of elevation to the circles of the upper ten; as if you were not there already by the merit of your genius alone! What would Lord Carlyon be without you, even were he twenty times a lord! He owes everything to you, and to your brain-work; he is nothing in himself, and less than nothing! There,—I have gone too far!’ Delicia stood very still; her face was pale, and her beautiful eyes were cold in their shining as the gleam of stars in frosty weather. ‘Yes, you have gone too far, Mr Valdis,’ she said, ‘and I am sorry—for we were friends.’ She laid the slightest little emphasis on the word ‘were,’ and the strong heart of the man who loved her sank heavily with a forlorn sense of misery. But the inward rage that consumed him to think that she—the patient, loving woman, who coined wealth by her own unassisted work, while her husband spent the money and amused himself with her earnings—should be publicly sneered at as a nothing, and her worser-half toadied and flattered as if he were a Yankee millionaire in his own right, was stronger than the personal passion he entertained for her, and his manful resentment of the position could not be repressed. ‘I am sorry too, Lady Carlyon,’ he said hoarsely, avoiding her gaze, ‘for I do not feel I can retract anything I have said.’ There was a silence. Delicia was deeply displeased; yet with her displeasure there was mingled a vague sense of uneasiness and fear. She found it difficult to maintain her self-possession; there was something in the defiant look and attitude of Valdis that almost moved her to give way to a sudden, undignified outburst of anger. She was tempted to cry out to him, ‘What is it you are hiding from me? There is something—tell me all you know!’ But she bit her lips hard, and laid her hand on Spartan’s collar to somewhat conceal its trembling. Thus standing, she bent her head with grave grace and courtesy. ‘Good-bye, Mr Valdis!’ He started, and looked at her half imploringly. The simple words were his dismissal, and he knew it. Because he had, in that unguarded moment, spoken a word in dispraise of the glorious six feet of husband, the doors of Delicia’s house would henceforth be closed to him, and the fair presence of Delicia herself would be denied to his sight. It was a blow—but he was a man, and he took his punishment manfully.