“Indeed; who told you that?”

“Scandal.  But I never listen to scandal, and I didn’t believe it.”

“I don’t suppose you believe that a woman could be a genius.”

“No?  I have seen women who were geniuses, before now; but in every instance it meant—­I shall hurt your feelings if I tell you what it meant.”

“Not at all.  I have no feelings.”

“It meant either devilry or disease.”  Tyson’s eyes twinkled wickedly as he stroked his blonde mustache.  He felt a diabolical delight in teasing Miss Batchelor.  There was a time when Miss Batchelor had admired Tyson.  He was not handsome; but his face had character, and she liked character.  Now she hated him and his face and everything belonging to him, his wife included.  But there was no denying that he was clever, cleverer than any man she had ever met in her life.

“Even a great intellect”—­here Tyson looked hard at Miss Batchelor, and her faded nervous face seemed to shrink under the look—­“is a great misfortune—­to a woman.  Look at my wife now.  She has about as much intellect as a guinea-pig, and the consequence is she is not only happy herself, but a cause of happiness to others.  There—­see!”

Miss Batchelor saw.  She saw Sir Peter Morley contending with the rector for the honor of handing Mrs. Nevill Tyson her tea.  They were joined by Stanistreet.  Yes, Stanistreet.  The rector seemed to have drawn the line nowhere that day.  There was no mistaking the tall figure, alert and vigorous, the lean dark face, a little eager, a little hard.  And that very clever woman Miss Batchelor sat hungry and thirsty—­very hungry and very thirsty—­and Tyson stood behind her stroking his mustache.  He was not looking at her now, nor thinking of her.  He was contemplating that adorable piece of folly, his wife.

CHAPTER III

MR. AND MRS. NEVILL TYSON AT HOME

Perhaps it was well that Mrs. Nevill Tyson took things so lightly, otherwise she might have been somewhat oppressed by her surroundings at Thorneytoft.  That hideous old barrack stared with all the uncompromising truculence of bare white stone on nature that smiled agreeably round it in lawn and underwood.  Old Tyson had bought the house as it stood from an impecunious nobleman, supplying its deficiencies according to his own very respectable fancy.  The result was a little startling.  Worm-eaten oak was flanked by mahogany veneer, brocade and tapestry were eked out with horse-hair and green rep, gules and azure from the stained-glass lozenge lattices were reflected in a hundred twinkling, dangling lusters; and you came upon lions rampant in a wilderness of wax-flowers.  What with antique heraldry and utilitarian furniture, you would have said there was no place there for anything so frivolously pretty as Mrs. Nevill Tyson; unless, indeed, her figure served to give the finishing touch to the ridiculous medley.