It was the last quality which would give him a unique value in Stella Ballantyne's eyes.

He was not one of the chinless who haunt the stage doors; nor again one of that more subtly decadent class which seeks to attract sensation by linking itself to notoriety.No.From Stella's point of view Dick Hazlewood must be the ideal husband.
Mrs.Pettifer waited for her husband's return that evening with unusual impatience, but she was wise enough to hold her tongue until dinner was over and he with a cigar between his lips and a glass of old brandy on the table-cloth in front of him, disposed to amiability and concession.
Then, however, she related her troubles.
"You see it must be stopped, Robert." Robert Pettifer was a lean wiry man of fifty-five whose brown dried face seemed by a sort of climatic change to have taken on the colour of the binding of his law-books.

He, too, was a little troubled by the story, but he was of a fair and cautious mind.
"Stopped ?" he said.

"How?
We can't arrest Mrs.Ballantyne again." "No," replied Mrs.Pettifer.

"Robert, you must do something." Robert Pettifer jumped in his chair.
"I, Margaret! Lord love you, no! I decline to mix myself up in the matter at all.