He came to dinner--and a very good dinner we had. It was neatly served by Olga, who, with her face all smiles, appeared almost to coax us to eat. I laughingly asked Tamworth if he recalled a former dinner with us, for at present I felt far superior to that uncanny day. Yes, he remembered it, and was quite amused. I noticed, that he watched Olga very closely--with almost embarrassing attention, but I ascribed this to his interest in her truly respectable dinner, a dinner, by-the-by, that had no premonitory menu cards. We had grown out of that sort of thing, and out of others. Letitia no longer appeared _décolleté_, although I still wore evening clothes. After dinner, when Letitia had left us to our cigars, Tamworth struck a match, and, pausing before he lighted his weed, looked at me with a puzzled manner. "I'm surprised at you, Fairfax," he said. "Of course she is a good cook. There is no doubt about that. But do you think it quite nice, or--advisable?" "What--what do you mean?" "Well," he said nervously, "it seems a pity that the woman shouldn't stay at home with her husband, or--if she is a widow, with her people." "My dear Tamworth," I remarked laughing, "you are a humorist. Why, she has never even told us that she is married. I'm quite sure she isn't." "Oh, I hope she is," he cried, "I hope for Mrs. Fairfax's sake that she is. Say, old man, you certainly don't want this sort of thing. I am sure it is very charitable of you--and all that. It is very sweet and womanly of Mrs. Fairfax. But the other people in the house must talk." At first I thought the man had gone stark, staring mad. He had taken very little wine at dinner, so it couldn't possibly be that. I looked at him in amazement. "You don't mean to tell me," he went on, "that you're blind?" Then he said some things, in a low tone, that I--I really can't write. They were horrible. They sent the blood rushing to my face. They impelled me back to the day we engaged Olga, when a strange idea had occurred to me, that I had banished instantly. So thoroughly had I banished it, that it had never occurred again, and came to me now as a sheer and odious novelty. Tamworth could have no object in making these suggestions to me. He was undoubtedly in earnest. Yet it seemed so ridiculous and so lacking in--er--etiquette. Olga was such a pleasant, good-natured person. Still, I was bound to admit that even pleasant, good-natured persons--