A tete-a-tete dinner with my husband would have been insupportable.

I should have had to telephone to Sarah Baldwin if you had not been available.

Sarah would probably have been engaged, and then I should have had to have gone to bed with a headache." "You don't imagine," he asked, smiling, "that I am disappointed at your husband's absence ?" "I hope not," she answered, raising her eyes to his for a moment.
"Let me imitate your adorable frankness," he begged.

"I hope your husband's absence this evening is not because he objects to meeting me ?" "Of course not," she replied wonderingly.

"Why on earth should he object to meeting you ?" "You probably don't know," Wingate replied, "that I am in a sort of way the declared enemy of the British and Imperial Granaries--Phipps' latest escapade--of which your husband is a director." "I am sure that would not have made the slightest difference," she replied.