"
"And the worst of it is that he is adored," said Mrs. Wolfstein. "Look at
my passion for Henry."
They began to talk about their husbands. Lady Holme did not join in. She
and Pimpernel Schley were very silent members of the party. Even Miss
Burns, who was--so she said--a spinster by conviction not by necessity,
plunged into the husband question, and gave some very daring
illustrations of the marriage customs of certain heathen tribes.
Pimpernel Schley hardly spoke at all. When someone, turning to her, asked
her what she thought about the subject under discussion, she lifted her
pale eyes and said, with the choir-boy drawl:
"I've got no husband and never had one, so I guess I'm no kind of a
judge."
"I guess she's a judge of other women's husbands, though," said Mrs.
Wolfstein to Lady Cardington. "That child is going to devastate London."
Now and then Lady Holme glanced towards Sir Donald and his son. They
seemed as untalkative as she was. Sir Donald kept on looking towards Mrs.
Wolfstein's table. So did Leo. But whereas Leo Ulford's eyes were fixed
on Pimpernel Schley, Sir Donald's met the eyes of Lady Holme. She felt
annoyed; not because Sir Donald was looking at her, but because his son
was not.
How these women talked about their husbands! Lady Cardington, who was a
widow, spoke of husbands as if they were a race which was gradually dying
out. She thought the modern woman was beginning to get a little tired of
the institution of matrimony, and to care much less for men than was
formerly the case.
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