"
"Are you going out?"
"Yes," he answered, "I have got to go to a meeting of the Executive
Committee of the St. Filipe. There is some sort of a row; I don't know
what. How are you going to amuse yourself."
"By doing my duty."
"Do you find duty amusing then; I shouldn't have suspected it."
"Oh, duty's only another name for necessity. I'm going to the theatre
with Fred Rangely. He wrote an article for the _Observer_ in favor of
that great booby Stanton's having the statue. It was a very lukewarm
plea, but I asked him to do it, and as a reward"--
"He is allowed the inestimable boon of taking you to the theatre,"
finished her husband, "I must say, Dian, that you are, on the whole,
the shrewdest woman I know."
"Thank you. I must be just, you know," she returned smiling as
brilliantly as if her husband were to be won again.
It was not without reason that Mrs. Staggchase had spoken of herself
and her husband as a model couple. Given her theory of married life,
nothing could be more satisfactory and consistent than the way in which
she lived up to it. Her ideal of matrimony was a sort of mutual
_laisser faire_, conducted with the utmost propriety and politeness.
She made an especial point of being as attractive to her husband as to
any other man; and she had the immense advantage of never having been
in love with anybody but herself and of being philosophical enough not
to consider the good things of conversation wasted if they were said
for his exclusive benefit.
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