"Say, Lydia," said Madeleine with her bluff good humor, coming into the house a few days after the French lecture, "say, I'm awfully sorry I told Paul! I never supposed he'd go and get mad. It was just my fool notion of being funny." Lydia was dusting the balustrade, her back to her visitor. She tingled all through at this speech, and for an instant went on with her work, trying to decide if she should betray the fact that she knew nothing of the incident to which Madeleine's remark seemed to refer, or if she should, as she had done so many times already, conceal under a silence her ignorance of what her husband told other people. She never learned of matters pertaining to Paul's profession except from chance remarks of his business associates. He had not even told her, until questioned, about his great inspiration for rearranging the territory covered in that region by his company; a plan that must have engrossed his thoughts and fired his enthusiasm during months of apparently common life with his wife. And Paul had been genuinely surprised, and a little put out at her desire to know of it. She decided that she dared not in this instance keep silent. She was too entirely in the dark as to what Madeleine had done. "I don't know what you're talking about, Madeleine," she said, turning around, dust-cloth in hand, trying to speak casually. Her sister-in-law stared. "Didn't Paul come home and give it to you? He looked as though he were going to." Lydia's heart sank in a vague premonition of evil. "Paul hasn't said anything to me. Why in the world should he? Is it about 'Stashie? She's been back several days now, but I thought he hadn't noticed her much." "Well, he _hasn't_ said anything, that's a fact!" exclaimed Madeleine, with the frank implication in her voice that she had not before believed Lydia's statement. "My, no! It's not about 'Stashie. It's about the French lecturer." Lydia's astonishment at this unexpected answer quite took away her breath. "_About the_--" she began. "Why, look-y here, it was this way," explained Madeleine rapidly. "I told you I was only joking. I thought it would be fun to tease Paul about the mash you made on old What's-his-name--about your sitting off on a sofa with him, and being so wrapped up you didn't even notice when the whole gang of us came to look at you--and maybe I stretched it some about how you looked leaning forward and gazing into his eyes--" She broke off with a laugh, cheerfully unable to continue a serious attitude toward life. "Oh, never you mind! It does a married man good to make him jealous once in a while. Keeps 'em from getting too stodgy and husbandy." "Jealous!" cried Lydia. "Paul jealous! Of me! Never!" Her certainty on the point was instant and fixed.