He waited until the meal was over and Royal Daylight had cleared the table, and had also cleared away herself, before he mentioned the taxi. And then very bluntly, and in a tone entirely new to her as well as to himself, he demanded an explanation. Cora, it seemed, was in a rather chastened mood. For one thing, she was now sober, and when she was sober she was not exactly a fool. She was not really repentant. He was too poor a thing to make a self-respecting woman repent. But now she was again herself, she was both shrewd and wary; after all, this double-adjectival idiot was the goose that laid the golden eggs. "I was a bit on last night," she said, with well-assumed humility. [Illustration: "'I was a bit on last night,' she said, with well-assumed humility."] "Yes, I heard you was when you come home," he said, with the new note in his voice that she didn't like. "Oh, so you _did_ hear." She suddenly determined to carry the war into the enemy's country. "Why didn't you open it, then?" The cold impudence stung. "I'd rather have died than have opened it to a cow like you." He hardly knew the words he used. They had seemed to spring unbidden from the back of beyond. She half respected him for speaking to her in that way, and in such a tone; there was perhaps a little more to the double-adjectival one than she had guessed. And as the cards were dead against her now, she decided on a strategic grovel of pathos and brandy. "Call yourself a gentleman?" Tears sprang reluctantly to the raddled cheek. The sight of a lady in tears, even a lady who drank, was a little too much for Henry Harper. "I beg your pardon," he said. "I oughtn't to have said that." He had remembered that the word "cow" as applied to the female sex was a Blackhampton expression and a favorite with Auntie. The lady could only weep a little more profusely. This mug was as soft as butter. He stood looking at her with tight lips and with eyes of sorrowful disgust. "But you've no right to drink as much as you do," he said, determinedly. "And you've no right to ride in taxis with gentlemen and to let them put their arms round you." "And you've no right to call your own lawful wife a cow," she said, tearfully. "I've apologized for that," he said. "But you've given me no explanation of that gentleman." "Didn't I say I was a bit on," she said aggrievedly. "It's no excuse. It makes it worse." "Yes, it does," said Mrs. Henry Harper, with a further grovel, "if it happened. But it didn't happen. You was mistaken, Harry. I'm too much the lady to let any gentleman, whether he was in evening dress or whether he wasn't, put his arm around me in a taxi. I wouldn't think of it now I'm married. Now, you kiss your Cora, Harry, for calling her a name." She approached him with pursed lips. In spite of the shame he felt for such a lapse from his official duties, he retreated slowly before her.