At that moment Gradbury burst in melodramatically, the image of despair. "Hullo, Gradbury!" said the other two, "what's wrong with _you_?" "Ugh! Everything!" growled Gradbury. "Nice game for a man's wife and three daughters and niece to go off all at once to----" "New York?" cried Wiffler and Jenkinson, in a breath. "Ah!--that's the very place!" shrieked Gradbury. "And I'll tell you what--I've my suspicions that----" "Your suspicions are well founded," said Jenkinson, in a hollow voice. "That _was_ their object." Then those three miserable men went off to the club; and the hubbub as they entered the smoke-room told them that something was amiss. Frodwell was standing on the hearthrug declaiming about the right place for a wife being by her husband's side instead of frivolling off to crack-brained colleges holding out all manner of insane and impracticable ----. About twenty other clubbites stood round and grunted approval. Anger and gloom were the dominant principles of that smoke-room. "_Your_ wife gone over? Oh, no, of course, you haven't got a wife," said Jenkinson to young Flabtree. "No; and what's more, I'm not likely to have one now. My best girl's gone over to New York--for three years she thinks. Hanged if I know how _she_ can be improved by that fool of a college--for _that's_ where _she's_ off to, you bet! Her fringe keeps frizzy in wet weather, and she has a little dimple each side of her nose; so what more _can_ she want?" "All _my_ best girls have gone!" said poor young Grownder, sinking into a settee and covering his face with his hands. [Illustration: "POSTERS."] It was the same sad story at every club you entered; bereaved married men and deserted bachelors stood mopingly on the hearthrugs or flopped in limp despair on the big chairs. Every day the papers had been filled with advertisements and "pars" and articles about the College of Beauty; flaring posters, with pictures of a lady, before and after a course of the College, covered London: the before lady had wild red hair, a pug-nose, a heavy squint, one immense front tooth, lips like a negro's, and the figure of a sack of potatoes; the after lady--supposed to be the same person--had a Grecian nose, great blue eyes, wavy brown hair, and an ideal figure. Every day the crisis became more grave; the great transatlantic lines had hired extra ships to fill with ladies proceeding to New York: it had been made "worth the while" of several eminent London physicians to prescribe a course of "New York." The sight of a lady in the London streets was becoming more and more rare. Men in a hopeless state of dejection, even of melancholy insanity, roved aimlessly about the pavements. The club-houses had to hire extra accommodation for men whose homes, bereft of the feminine element, had become loathsome and abhorrent to them.