There was a look in her dark bead-like eyes which showed Charles why Dare had been unable to face her.

The look, determined, cunning, watchful, put him on his guard, and his manner became a shade more unconcerned.
"Any friend of my husband's is welcome," she said.
"There is no question for the moment about your husband, though no doubt a subject of peculiar interest to yourself.

I was speaking of Mr.Dare." She rose to her feet, as if unable to sit while he was standing.
"Mr.Dare is my husband," she said, with a little gesture of defiance, tapping sharply on the table with a teaspoon she held in her hand.
Charles smiled blandly, and looked out of the window.
"There is evidently some misapprehension on that point," he observed, "which I am here to remove.

Mr.Dare is at present unmarried." "I am his wife," reiterated the woman, her color rising under her rouge.
"I am, and I won't go.

He dared not come himself, a poor coward that he is, to turn his wife out-of-doors.