'But we await your explanation. What business has he to desert his wife and children?'
'Let me give an account of a day I spent with him at Tintern, not long before I left England. He and his wife were having a holiday there, and I called on them. We went to walk about the Abbey. Now, for some two hoursI will be strictly truthfulwhilst we were in the midst of that lovely scenery, Mrs. Orchard discoursed unceasingly of one subjectthe difficulty she had with her domestic servants. Ten or twelve of these handmaidens were marshalled before our imagination; their names, their ages, their antecedents, the wages they received, were carefully specified. We listened to a catalogue raisonne of the plates, cups, and other utensils that they had broken. We heard of the enormities which in each case led to their dismissal. Orchard tried repeatedly to change the subject, but only with the effect of irritating his wife. What could he or I do but patiently give ear? Our walk was ruined, but there was no help for it. Now, be good enough to extend this kind of thing over a number of years. Picture Orchard sitting down in his home to literary work, and liable at any moment to an invasion from Mrs. Orchard, who comes to tell him, at great length, that the butcher has charged for a joint they have not consumedor something of that kind. He assured me that his choice lay between flight and suicide, and I firmly believed him.'
As he concluded, his eyes met those of Miss Nunn, and the latter suddenly spoke.
'Why will men marry fools?'
Barfoot was startled. He looked down into his plate, smiling.
'A most sensible question,' said the hostess, with a laugh. 'Why, indeed?'
'But a difficult one to answer,' remarked Everard, with his most restrained smile. 'Possibly, Miss Nunn, narrow social opportunity has something to do with it. They must marry some one, and in the case of most men choice is seriously restricted.'
'I should have thought,' replied Rhoda, elevating her eyebrows, 'that to live alone was the less of two evils.'
'Undoubtedly. But men like these two we have been speaking of haven't a very logical mind.'
Miss Barfoot changed the topic.
When, not long after, the ladies left him to meditate over his glass of wine, Everard curiously surveyed the room. Then his eyelids drooped, he smiled absently, and a calm sigh seemed to relieve his chest. The claret had no particular quality to recommend it, and in any case he would have drunk very little, for as regards the bottle his nature was abstemious.
'It is as I expected,' Miss Barfoot was saying to her friend in the drawing-room. 'He has changed very noticeably.'
'Mr. Barfoot isn't quite the man your remarks had suggested to me,' Rhoda replied.