“I’ve just told you how you might hear it,” she said, plying her needle and seeming to give it all her attention. “But I can’t spend my time in the tulip bed, Lydia.” “That’s not what I meant. I said, ‘If her husband ever makes such a fuss that it gets into the papers.’” “If he does, I might find out what she said to the chauffeur?” “Oh, maybe,” Mrs. Dodge said; and she gave him a sidelong glance of some sharpness, then quickly seemed to be busy again with her work. “I don’t make it out at all,” the puzzled gentleman complained. “Apparently you overheard Mrs. Braithwaite saying something to her chauffeur that would be ruinous to her if it were known—something that might cause her husband to make a public uproar if he had heard it himself. Is that it?” Mrs. Dodge began to hum fragmentarily to herself and seemed concerned with nothing in the world except the selection of a proper spool of thread from her basket. “Is that it, Lydia?” “You’ll never find out from me,” she said, searching anxiously through the basket. “Anyhow, I shouldn’t think you’d need to ask such simple questions.” “So that _is_ it! What you heard her say to her chauffeur would ruin her if people knew about it. Was she talking to the chauffeur about her husband?” “Good gracious!” Mrs. Dodge cried, derisively. “What would she be talking to anybody about _that_ poor little thing for? She never does. I don’t believe anybody ever heard her mention him in her life!” “Then was she talking to the chauffeur about some other man?” “Of all the ideas! If a woman were in love with a man not her husband, do you think she’d tell her servants about it? Besides, they’ve only had this chauffeur about two weeks. Have you noticed him?” “Yes,” said Mr. Dodge. “I’ve seen him sitting in their car in front of the house several times, and I was quite struck with him. He seemed to be not only one of the handsomest young men I ever saw, but to have rather the look of a gentleman.” “So?” Mrs. Dodge said, inquiringly; and her tone was the more significant because of her appearing to be wholly preoccupied with her work-basket. “You noticed _that_, did you?” “You don’t mean to say——” “I don’t mean to say anything at all,” she interrupted, crisply. “I’ve told you that often enough for you to begin to understand it.” “All right, I do. Well, when she’d said whatever she did say to the chauffeur, what happened?” “Oh, that,” she returned, “I’m perfectly willing to tell you. I got up and looked at her over the hedge. I wasn’t going to stay there and listen—and I certainly wasn’t going to crawl away on my hands and knees! I just looked at her quietly and turned away and came into the house.” “What did she do?”