Mrs. Milbrey entered, news of importance visibly animating her. Her husband arose mechanically, placed the chair for her, and resumed his fork in an ecstasy of concentration. Yet, though Mrs. Milbrey was full of talk, like a charged siphon, needing but a slight pressure to pour forth matters of grave moment, she observed the engrossment of her husband, and began on the half of an orange. She knew from experience that he would be deaf, for the moment, to anything less than an alarm of fire. When he had lovingly consumed the last morsel he awoke to her presence and smiled benignantly. "My dear, don't fail to try them, they're exquisitely perfect!" "You really _must_ talk to Avice," his wife replied. Mr. Milbrey sighed, deprecatingly. He could remember no time within five years when that necessity had not weighed upon his father's sense of duty like a vast boulder of granite. He turned to welcome the diversion provided by the _rognons sautees_ which Jarvis at that moment uncovered before him with a discreet flourish. "Now you really must," continued his wife, "and you'll agree with me when I tell you why." "But, my dear, I've already talked to the girl exhaustively. I've pointed out that her treatment of Mrs. Wybert--her perverse refusal to meet the lady at all, is quite as absurd as it is rude, and that if Fred chooses to marry Mrs. Wybert it is her duty to act the part of a sister even if she cannot bring herself to feel it. I've assured her that Mrs. Wybert's antecedents are all they should be; not illustrious, perhaps, but eminently respectable. Indeed, I quite approve of the Southern aristocracy. But she constantly recalls what that snobbish Bines was unfair enough to tell her. I've done my utmost to convince her that Bines spoke in the way he did about Mrs. Wybert because he knew she was aware of those ridiculous tales of his mother's illiteracy. But Avice is--er--my dear, she is like her mother in more ways than one. Assuredly she doesn't take it from me." He became interested in the kidneys. "If Marie had been a man," he remarked, feelingly, "I often suspect that her fame as a _chef_ would have been second to none. Really, the suavity of her sauces is a never-ending delight to me." "I haven't told you yet the reason--a new reason--why you must talk to Avice." "The money--yes, yes, my dear, I know, we all know. Indeed, I've put it to her plainly. She knows how sorely Fred needs it. She knows how that beast of a tailor is threatening to be nasty--and I've explained how invaluable Mrs. Wybert would be, reminding her of that lady's generous hint about the rise in Federal Steel, which enabled me to net the neat little profit of ten thousand dollars a month ago, and how, but for that, we might have been acutely distressed. Yet she stubbornly clings to the notion that this marriage would be a _mesalliance_ for the Milbreys." "I agree with her," replied his wife, tersely. Mr. Milbrey looked perplexed but polite.