The deception had been going on for about a fortnight, and M'Cranky was getting hardened in it, when his friend said, "Mrs. Macfarlane was telling me she had asked Mrs. M'Cranky along to supper to-night, and I was to bring you along with me." "Thank you," said M'Cranky, with an idea that exposure was imminent. Would he ask his friend not to allude to golf? No; that would be a confession that he was afraid of his wife, and he would have no one think that. He must trust to luck. It would be bad enough for his wife to find it out, but worse if before other people. That was his least enjoyable day; and as golf requires all one's attention, and M'Cranky's thoughts were wandering, he played a bad game. He was wishing the night safely over, and he would certainly put an end to the deceit next day. "Aren't our husbands looking well?" said Mrs. Macfarlane to Mrs. M'Cranky. "But no wonder they are brown; the two of them are never off the----" "You have a fine view here," M'Cranky interrupted, trying to change the subject. "Yes; I suppose you haven't been as far east before? You men never think of anything but the Links; you never think of taking out your wives." "Well, you know, Mr. M'Cranky hasn't much time just now, and I know he is the better of any exercise he can get. However, next month we are going to Crieff, and he'll have no business to worry him; but when one has to go in to business every day, it just spoils the----" "May we have a smoke?" said M'Cranky perspiring with excitement. "We might go outside"; and the two women were left to have a talk by themselves. "Does your wife think you go in to town every morning?" Macfarlane asked, laughing, when they got outside. "Oh, I don't think so," said M'Cranky, with assumed carelessness. "You see, she wanted to go to Crieff this month, and I--eh--didn't see my way at the time, and--eh--perhaps I didn't say anything about it after. She's always late for breakfast, and, in fact, I never thought anything about it." The two ladies laughed when their husbands returned; and when Mrs. Macfarlane said, "There's not one better than another; men were deceivers ever," M'Cranky felt that the secret was out. "He has been telling his wife," he thought; "some men can't keep anything from their wives." Still he felt that he was only trying to excuse himself, and that he was in the wrong--a bitter admission for him to have to admit even to himself. And what was the cause of all his deceit? Simply that Davidson had asked him to have a day at Kinghorn, and had beaten him; and he had determined to have a month's practice, and challenge him again. "I could easily beat Davidson," he said, when asked how they got on; "he has a bad style of addressing the ball, and only takes a half swing." Davidson, however, had been practising too, and has beaten him again in the return match, and now M'Cranky has not even the satisfaction of feeling that his subterfuge and humiliation have been compensated.