"You are mistress here, dear, and you can ask as many people to Tavistock Villa as you like. I shall never interfere."

Of that I now felt certain. Well, my plot had been an utter and a dismal failure. All my time had been spent for nothing. I had cultivated this nonenity with an object in view. The nonenity was there in all his cultivation, and the object had disappeared. I could never make my husband jealous.

What could I do? Tavistock Villa was becoming disgusting to me. I could not endure its atmosphere much longer. I would go up to London to-morrow, make a confidant of my mother—a thing I had never yet done—and hear what she thought about the situation.