U5 ANGEL PAVEMENT

not alone. The idiot had brought a complete stranger
into the dining-room with him, a girl.

She was a very pretty girl, quite young, and on his
face was that fatuous smile which husbands always seem
to wear in the company of young and very pretty girls.
All wives recognise and detest that fatuous smile. It is
bad at any time, but when it accompanies a girl who is a
complete stranger into the dining-room at the conclusion
of a disastrous dinner, and brings her into the presence
of a wife who has not felt even decently presentable for
hours and hours and who has been ready to scream for
the last forty-five minutes, then it is a catastrophe and
a mortal injury. And so Mrs. Dersingham gave Mr.
Dersingham one look that sent that fatuous smile
trembling into oblivion. And then, half rising from her
chair, Mrs. Dersingham looked at the stranger, and de-
cided at once that she had never before seen a girl she
disliked so much at sight as this one.

Tm afraid-er-I don't," she began.

But the girl was not even looking at her. She was busy
hfeving her left cheek brushed by the large moustache of
Mr. Golspie, who had flung an arm round her shoulders.

"Well, hang me, Lena girl," Mr. Golspie was roaring,
"if I hadn't forgotten all about you."

"You would," said the girl coolly. "You're a rotten
father. I've told you that before. Now introduce me."

'O?

"Now this is my fault," Mr. Golspie boomed at the
Dersinghams, turning from one to the other, "my fault
entirely. I ought to have told you. I meant to, but I