"An honoured name!" "Sneerin' won't alter facts, Leah. The name of Kaimes has always been honoured----" "Till you dragged it through the mud," interrupted Leah, in her turn. "The old Duke is all right, and Frith's a kind man, if somewhat dull. But you--oh heavens! to think that such a Saul should be amongst the prophets." Jim, not understanding the scriptural allusion, thought he was being chaffed, a liberty which his bovine pride resented by two minutes of sulky silence. Moreover, he dreaded his wife's formidable tongue, the lash of which could cut through even his tough hide. "How are we goin' to get through the business at this rate?" was his next contribution to the conversation. "You don't remember that I've to meet a fellow at the club to see about a bet. An' I haven't got one shillin' to rattle against another," declared Jim, pathetically. "Well," was the sharp reply, "I have to shop this afternoon with but one miserable sovereign in my purse." Lord Jim opened his sleepy blue eyes. "I say, you couldn't----?" "No," said his wife, decisively. "I couldn't and I wouldn't, and I can't and I shan't. Perhaps you'll read the paper and let me think." "All right," said Kaimes, reaching for the _Sporting Times_. "I want to see the bettin' on Podaskas." "Betting will be your ruin." "Has been," corrected Jim, chuckling; then reverted to his early metaphor: "We're on the rocks this time, Leah, and no mistake." His wife cast a look of scorn on the pink-and-white face she had once thought handsome. And, indeed, Kaimes was good-looking in a heavy Saxon way. Tall and muscular, with the strength of a bull and the manners of a bear, he was precisely the sort of brutal athlete to attract women. They flocked round him like bees, and gave him more honey than was good for him. He accepted their endearments with the complacent vanity of an egotist, and took little trouble to please even the prettiest, whereupon he was adored the more. Leah, with her elbows on the breakfast-table, stared at Jim's well-brushed head bending over the pink sheets, and asked herself, for the hundredth time, why she had married him. Physically he resembled a splendid Hercules, but in another sense the likeness was not a speaking one. He satisfied her eyes, and in no other way gave her pleasure. When he talked, he babbled vainly about himself and his doings, to the exclusion of any topic likely to interest other people. Possessed of that easy good-nature which refuses nothing, which costs nothing, Jim Kaimes was looked upon as "a good fellow," a title which covers a multitude of the minor sins. Jim would have been meritorious as a cave-man, and pre-historically perfect. As a civilised being he left very much to be desired. The subject was neither agreeable nor inexhaustible, and Leah rose with a shrug of her shapely shoulders. Jim looked up. "Well?" he asked encouragingly. "Nothing!" said his wife, curtly, and moved to the window.