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Mrs. Pethel’s love, though less explicit, was not less evidently profound. But the maternal instinct is less attractive to an onlooker, because he takes it more for granted than the paternal. What endeared poor Mrs. Pethel to me was–well, the inevitability of the epithet I give her. She seemed, poor thing, so essentially out of it; and by “it” is meant the glowing mutual affinity of husband and child. Not that she didn’t, in her little way, assert herself during the meal. But she did so, I thought, with the knowledge that she didn’t count, and never would count. I wondered how it was that she had, in that Cambridge bar-room long ago, counted for Pethel to the extent of matrimony. But from any such room she seemed so utterly remote that she might well be in all respects now an utterly changed woman. She did preeminently look as if much had by some means been taken out of her, with no compensatory process of putting in. Pethel looked so very young for his age, whereas she would have had to be really old to look young for hers. I pitied her as one might a governess with two charges who were hopelessly out of hand. But a governess, I reflected, can always give notice. Love tied poor Mrs. Pethel fast to her present situation.

As the three of them were to start next day on their tour through France, and as the four of us were to make a tour to Rouen this afternoon, the talk was much about motoring, a theme which Miss Peggy’s enthusiasm made almost tolerable. I said to Mrs. Pethel, with more good-will than truth, that I supposed she was “very keen on it.” She replied that she was.

“But, darling Mother, you aren’t. I believe you hate it. You’re ALWAYS asking father to go slower. And what IS the fun of just crawling along?”

“Oh, come, Peggy, we never crawl!” said her father.

“No, indeed,” said her mother in a tone of which Pethel laughingly said it would put me off coming out with them this afternoon. I said, with an expert air to reassure Mrs. Pethel, that it wasn’t fast driving, but only bad driving, that was a danger.

“There, Mother!” cried Peggy. “Isn’t that what we’re always telling you?”

I felt that they were always either telling Mrs. Pethel something or, as in the matter of that intended bath, not telling her something. It seemed to me possible that Peggy advised her father about his “investments.” I wondered whether they had yet told Mrs. Pethel of their intention to go on to Switzerland for some climbing.

Of his secretiveness for his wife’s sake I had a touching little instance after luncheon. We had adjourned to have coffee in front of the hotel. The car was already in attendance, and Peggy had darted off to make her daily inspection of it. Pethel had given me a cigar, and his wife presently noticed that he himself was not smoking. He explained to her that he thought he had smoked too much lately, and that he was going to “knock it off” for a while. I would not have smiled if he had met my eye, but his avoidance of it made me quite sure that he really had been “thinking over” what I had said last night about nicotine and its possibly deleterious action on the gambling thrill.

Mrs. Pethel saw the smile that I could not repress. I explained that I was wishing I could knock off tobacco, and envying her husband’s strength of character. She smiled, too, but wanly, with her eyes on him.

“Nobody has so much strength of character as he has,” she said.

“Nonsense!” he laughed. “I’m the weakest of men.”