The Mission of Jane

I

LETHBURY, surveying his wife across the dinner table, found his
transient conjugal glance arrested by an indefinable change in her
appearance.

"How smart you look! Is that a new gown?" he asked.

Her answering look seemed to deprecate his charging her with the
extravagance of wasting a new gown on him, and he now perceived that
the change lay deeper than any accident of dress. At the same time,
he noticed that she betrayed her consciousness of it by a delicate,
almost frightened blush. It was one of the compensations of Mrs.
Lethbury's protracted childishness that she still blushed as
prettily as at eighteen. Her body had been privileged not to
outstrip her mind, and the two, as it seemed to Lethbury, were
destined to travel together through an eternity of girlishness.

"I don't know what you mean," she said.

Since she never did, he always wondered at her bringing this out as
a fresh grievance against him; but his wonder was unresentful, and
he said good-humoredly: "You sparkle so that I thought you had on
your diamonds."

She sighed and blushed again.

"It must be," he continued, "that you've been to a dressmaker's
opening. You're absolutely brimming with illicit enjoyment."

She stared again, this time at the adjective. His adjectives always
embarrassed her: their unintelligibleness savored of impropriety.

"In short," he summed up, "you've been doing something that you're
thoroughly ashamed of."

To his surprise she retorted: "I don't see why I should be ashamed
of it!"

Lethbury leaned back with a smile of enjoyment. When there was
nothing better going he always liked to listen to her explanations.

"Well--?" he said.

She was becoming breathless and ejaculatory. "Of course you'll
laugh--you laugh at everything!"

"That rather blunts the point of my derision, doesn't it?" he
interjected; but she rushed on without noticing:

"It's so easy to laugh at things."

"Ah," murmured Lethbury with relish, "that's Aunt Sophronia's, isn't
it?"

Most of his wife's opinions were heirlooms, and he took a quaint
pleasure in tracing their descent. She was proud of their age, and
saw no reason for discarding them while they were still serviceable.
Some, of course, were so fine that she kept them for state
occasions, like her great-grandmother's Crown Derby; but from the
lady known as Aunt Sophronia she had inherited a stout set of
every-day prejudices that were practically as good as new; whereas
her husband's, as she noticed, were always having to be replaced. In
the early days