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distempered freak when I insisted you give up your inamorato .”
    “Distempered freak” was far too mild a phrase to adequately convey Mme. Joliffe’s frame of mind, which would find no satisfaction in anything so tame as a simple exchange of hostilities. At this current moment, Jess would have been content with nothing less than his lordship’s head presented to her on a platter. “You have been listening to the gossips,” she retorted, with an unfriendly glance. “Shame, Vidal!”
    “I don’t know how I can help but listen to them,” he retorted, “when it is you they are always going on about! Devil take it, Jess, this addiction of yours to play must give rise to just the sort of scandal we would both prefer to avoid!”
    “I am not addicted to game,” she retorted, “and even if I were, it would hardly be fair for you to chide me—unless since our last meeting you have given up your clubs.”
    “What nonsense is this?” he asked, honestly perplexed. Lord Pennymount was not of the philosophy that sauce for the gander might also serve the goose. “If you’re not addicted to game, why would the gossips be spreading stories about your frequent presence at an exclusive gaming-hell in King Street?” A possible explanation occurred to him, and he rose abruptly from the desk. “The devil! Is that blasted Frenchman truly your inamorato , Jess?”
    Mme. Joliffe had no intention of discussing with her high-handed ex-husband the more intimate details of her lovelife, or the lack thereof. Even hadshe been briefly tempted to divulge the lack of truth in those allegations, confidences are not generally inspired by hands clasped around one’s neck. Lord Pennymount was not throttling his ex-wife, precisely; but his grasp on her shoulders was rough.
    “Unhand me this instant, Vidal!” she demanded icily. “Your conduct is disgraceful.”
    In comparison with the conduct of his ex-wife, Lord Pennymount reflected, his own behavior was angelic. Therefore he did not release her, but gave her a little shake. So satisfying was that action that he gave her several more. The source of his lordship’s present displeasure is easily explained: by the sudden conviction that Capitaine Chançard was in truth Jessabelle’s inamorato , Lord Pennymount was rendered cross as crabs. And by the realization that Jessabelle’s patent wrong-headedness still had the power to anger him, he was even more incensed.
    The source of Lord Pennymount’s current outburst of hostility, Mme. Joliffe did not attempt to decipher, being wholly preoccupied with her own response. Oddly, her first impulse was not to box his lordship’s ears, as he certainly deserved, but to smooth back the dark locks that had tumbled forward onto his brow. Perhaps the shaking she was receiving had muddled up her brain. Since Vidal showed no sign of ceasing to manhandle her, Jess turned her head and bit his wrist.
    Cursing, Lord Pennymount released her. Glowering, Mme. Joliffe adjusted her chip straw hat. “Have you taken leave of your senses, Vidal?” she inquired.
    Lord Pennymount suspected that perhaps he had done so. “There’s no need to make a piece of work of it,” he retorted, nursing his wounded wrist. “I don’t see what cause you have to be so cursedly provoked!”
    Mme. Joliffe moved away from the window, lest she become so carried away by the violence of her feelings that she shove his lordship straight through it and out into the street. “It is not I who am devilish out of humor!” she responded sharply. “I am trying to be civil, but you make it deuced difficult. Do you suppose we might cease exchanging insults long enough for you to tell me why you have come here? Or perhaps you wished to see what effect a carefree life of dissipation— made possible by your so-generous allowance—has made on me!”
    Not surprisingly, this ironic utterance increased Lord Pennymount’s wrath. Abruptly, he dispensed with diplomacy and tact, which virtues in