She _is_ pretty," would be the answer, jerked over Miss Batchelor's shoulder.

(That habit was growing on her.) "And who or what is Mrs.Nevill Tyson ?" Whereupon Miss Batchelor would suddenly recover her self-possession and reply, "Not a person you would care to make an intimate friend of." And at this the stranger smiled or looked uncomfortable according to his nature.
Public sympathy was all with Tyson.

If ever a clever man ruined his life by a foolish marriage, that man was Tyson.

Opinions differed as to the precise extent of Mrs.Tyson's indiscretion; but her husband was held to have saved his honor by his spirited ejection of Captain Stanistreet, and he was respected accordingly.
Meanwhile the hero of this charming fiction was unconscious of the fine figure he cut.

He was preoccupied with the unheroic fact, the ridiculous cause of a still more ridiculous quarrel.