Do come up one of these days, and we'll have a chat." Then she became serious again and in the outraged tones of a respectable woman: "So he's a cuckold, is he ?" she cried.

"Well, that IS a nuisance, dear boy.

They've always sickened me, cuckolds have." When at length she went into the private room she noticed that Muffat was sitting resignedly on a narrow divan with pale face and twitching hands.

He did not reproach her at all, and she, greatly moved, was divided between feelings of pity and of contempt.

The poor man! To think of his being so unworthily cheated by a vile wife! She had a good mind to throw her arms round his neck and comfort him.