She pulled it out and laid it on the dressing-table.

She was criticising her own appearance, or rather approving of it, standing a little way back from the glass and looking at her own face with superb pride and melancholy, when her husband appeared in the doorway in his shirt sleeves, his face half obscured by a towel.
"You often tell me I don't notice things," he remarked.
"Tell me if this is a white hair, then ?" she replied.

She laid the hair on his hand.
"There's not a white hair on your head," he exclaimed.
"Ah, Ridley, I begin to doubt," she sighed; and bowed her head under his eyes so that he might judge, but the inspection produced only a kiss where the line of parting ran, and husband and wife then proceeded to move about the room, casually murmuring.
"What was that you were saying ?" Helen remarked, after an interval of conversation which no third person could have understood.
"Rachel--you ought to keep an eye upon Rachel," he observed significantly, and Helen, though she went on brushing her hair, looked at him.

His observations were apt to be true.
"Young gentlemen don't interest themselves in young women's education without a motive," he remarked.
"Oh, Hirst," said Helen.
"Hirst and Hewet, they're all the same to me--all covered with spots," he replied.

"He advises her to read Gibbon.