Tallente was seated at breakfast a few mornings later when his wife paid him an unexpected visit.

She responded to his greeting with a cold nod, refused the coffee which he offered her and the easy-chair which he pushed forward to the fire.
"I got your letter, Andrew," she said, "in which you proposed to call upon me this afternoon.

I am leaving town.

I am on my way back to New York, as a matter of fact, and I shall have left the hotel by midday, so you see I have come to visit you instead." "It is very kind," he answered.
She shrugged her shoulders and looked disparagingly around the plainly furnished man's sitting room.
"Not much altered here," she remarked.

"It looks just as it did when I used to come to tea with you before we were married." "The neighbourhood is a conservative one," he replied.