“Well, I must say I think it is very hard. What may I call her, Gil?”

“Nothing at all! Ladies know nothing of such things.”

“Yes, they do. Why, it was my cousin Cassy who first told me about Sherry’s opera dancer, so that just shows how mistaken you are!”

“Well, they pretend they do not, at all events!” said Mr Ringwood desperately.

“Oh, do they? But Sherry told me himself that everyone has an opera dancer, or something of the sort, and there is nothing in it. Gil, have you — ”

“No!” said Mr Ringwood, with more haste than civility.

“Oh!” said Hero, digesting this. She raised her eyes to his face and heaved a tiny sigh. “I am not a prude, Gil.”

“No,” agreed Mr Ringwood feelingly.

“And I am not going to be missish, for my cousin says there is nothing gentlemen dislike more. But I cannot help wishing — a very little — that Sherry had not an opera dancer either.”

Mr Ringwood made an inarticulate sound in his throat and took his embarrassingly outspoken charge back to her box. Here they were joined in a few moments by the Viscount and Mrs Hoby, and as the curtain went up almost immediately, there was no opportunity for any further confidences.

The whole party left the Opera House in the Sheringhams’ barouche, Mrs Hoby maintaining a sprightly flow of small talk until she was set down at her own door. Mr Ringwood went on to Half Moon Street with the Sheringhams, and cravenly refusing an invitation to enter the house with them, parted from them on the doorstep and walked the remainder of the way to his lodging. It went to his heart to ignore the pleading tug Hero gave his sleeve, but he was of the decided opinion that he would make a very uncomfortable third in the quarrel that was obviously brewing.

The door being opened to the returning couple by the butler, Hero, after one surreptitious glance at his lordship’s ominous face, said: “I am so tired! I think I will go straight up to my room.”

“Send your abigail to bed!” returned his lordship. “I want a word with you in private.”

The agitating prospect of a word alone with a husband who was looking like a thundercloud made Hero feel quite sick with apprehension. She would have liked to have kept the abigail at her side, but as it seemed more than probable that Sherry would order the woman out of the room if he found her there when he came up, she dared not do it.

He entered without ceremony not five minutes after the door had closed behind the abigail. Hero had just locked the pearl set away in her jewel case, and without these gauds she looked much younger, in fact, so like the tiresome little girl the Viscount had bullied in his schooldays, that he straightaway forgot the dignified speech he had been preparing all the way home from the Opera House, and strode across the room to her, seized her by the shoulders, and shook her unmercifully. “You abominable little wretch, how dared you?” he demanded wrathfully. “Didn’t I tell you — didn’t I warn you to guard that damned, indiscreet tongue of yours? ‘Oh, Sherry, is that your opera dancer? ’No, it was not my opera dancer, and you may take that with my compliments!”

Tears started to Hero’s eyes. Released, she pressed a hand to one tingling cheek, and quavered: “Oh, Sherry, don’t! I didn’t mean to say it! I forgot we were not alone!”

“If you had the smallest elegance of mind,” said his lordship furiously, “it would not have entered your head to have said it!”

“Well, but, Sherry, she did so look at you, and smile, that I could not but wonder .... But I quite see that I should not have said a word about it, and I am very sorry, and I will never do so again.”

“It will be better for you if you do not!” retorted her implacable spouse. “If I know anything of females, that cousin of yours will spread it all over town in a week — or she would if she moved in the first circles, which she don’t! And that’s another thing! I do not know how you come to have a cousin of such bad ton, but I can tell you that if you mean to be seen for ever in her company it will not do!”

Stung by the injustice of this, Hero retorted: “It was you who said that I was fortunate in having a relative in town! You said that there could not be the least objection to my visiting her!”

“I had not spent an evening in her company when I said that — if Isaid that!” replied Sherry grimly.

“It seemed to me that you were very well amused by her!” Hero flung at him. “I am sure you laughed enough at the things she was saying to you!”

“Well, I won’t have you jauntering about with her any more!” said Sherry, in a very imperious style. “Mind that!”

“I shan’t!” promptly replied Hero, losing her temper. “I shall make a friend of anyone I choose, and I shall go where I choose, and I shall do what I choose, and I shall — ”

“Will you, by God!” interrupted his lordship, descending purposefully upon her.

Hero retired strategically behind a small table. “Yes, I shall, and it is of no use to say Will I, by God! because it was you who said we would not interfere with one another, you know it was!”

The Viscount halted and stared at her suspiciously. “I said that? I’ll swear I never in my life said anything so damned silly!”

“Yes, you did! You said I should not find you the sort of husband for ever kicking up a dust over trifles! You said that as long as I was discreet — ”

“Well, you ain’t!” said his lordship, pouncing on this. “In fact, there was never anyone less discreet! And as for letting you do precisely as you choose, yes, a pretty piece of business you would make of that, my girl! With no more sense than that damned canary Gil was fool enough to give you, and no more notion of how to behave in society than Jason has!”

“I don’t steal!” hotly exclaimed his wife.

“I never said you did!”

“Yes, you did, because you said I was like Jason, and of all the odious things to say — ”

“I did not say you were like Jason! All I said was that you had no more idea — ”

“It is just the same, and it is just like you, Sherry, to say it is all my fault, when it was you who told me about bits of muslin and opera dancers!”

“How the deuce was I to know that you would blurt it out like a regular hoyden?” demanded his lordship.

“Well, you ought to have known I might very likely do so,’ Hero said candidly. “You have been acquainted with me for a long time, and I have made you as m-mad as fire with me times out of m-mind, through s-saying things I ought not. And Gil says you have no business to talk as you do in front of me, so it is just as much your fault as mine!”

“Oh!” said his lordship awfully. “So that’s it, is it? Not content with putting me to shame in public, you must needs discuss the matter with Gil! Upon my word, Hero, if that don’t beat all! I might have guessed how it would be! No doubt you asked him if he had an opera dancer too!”

“Yes, and he said — ”

“What?” thundered the Viscount.

“He said he had not,” ended Hero simply.

The Viscount appeared to have some difficulty in getting his breath. “Hero!” he uttered at last. “Have you no sense of propriety?”

“Yes, I have!” replied Hero, her bosom swelling. “I have much more than you have, Sherry, for I do not have opera dancers, or get foxed, or — Oh, I wish you will go away! You are unkind, and unforgiving, and unreasonable, and I hate you!”

“I am obliged to you, ma’am!” said the Viscount, seeking refuge in sudden and awe-inspiring dignity. “I have not the least notion of inflicting my presence on you another instant, and I will wish you a very goodnight!”

On this grand valediction he stalked from the room, closing the door with unnecessary violence, and leaving his overwrought wife to the indulgence of a hearty bout of tears.

They met next morning at the breakfast table, both very conscious of the previous night’s quarrel. The Viscount bade Hero a punctilious good morning, and buried himself in the newspaper. Hero poured out the coffee, and slowly consumed a roll. After a slight pause, she cleared her throat of an unaccountable lump, and said: “Sherry?”

The Viscount lowered the paper. “Well?”

“Will you have a little ham?” said Hero, quite dismayed by his forbidding aspect.

“No, I thank you, I will not.”

“Or — or some more coffee?”

“No,” said the Viscount, retiring once more into the paper.

Hero fortified herself with a few sips of her own coffee. She tried again. “Sherry?”

“Well, what is it now?”

“N-nothing!” said Hero, on a distinct sob.

“For heaven’s sake,” said his lordship, “don’t start to cry!”

“Perhaps I had best g-go out of the room then, because I c-can’t help crying when you’re so dreadfully unkind to me!” offered Hero.

“I’m not unkind to you.”

“Oh, Sherry, it is so very like you to say that, when you know very well you have used me quite shockingly!” Hero said with a smile quivering on her lips. “You always did so! But you never called me ma’am in that horrid way before, and I would rather you boxed both my ears than did that, indeed I would!”

“Serve you right if I did!” said his lordship, stretching out a hand across the table. “No, really, Kitten, I’m devilish sorry I hurt you! But of all the things to have said — ! However, you won’t do it again!”

“No, truly I won’t!” Hero assured him, tucking her hand in his.

A reluctant grin stole across the Viscount’s face. “Lord, I’d have given a monkey to have seen Gil’s phiz when you asked him if he had an opera dancer!” he said.