And afterward Rudolph Musgrave and his wife met amicably, and without reference to their last talk. Patricia wore black-and-white for some six months, and Colonel Musgrave accepted the compromise tacitly. All passed with perfect smoothness between them; and anyone in Lichfield would have told you that the Musgraves were a model couple.  
She called him "Rudolph" now.
 
"Olaf is such a silly-sounding nickname for two old married people, you know," Patricia estimated.
 
The colonel negligently said that he supposed it did sound odd.
 
"Only I don't think Clarice Pendomer would care about coming," he resumed,—for the two were discussing an uncompleted list of the people Patricia was to invite to their first house-party.
 
"And for heaven's sake, why not? We always have her to everything."
 
He could not tell her it was because the Charterises were to be among their guests. So he said: "Oh, well—!"
 
"Mrs. C.B. Pendomer, then"—Patricia wrote the name with a flourish. "Oh, you jay-bird, I'm not jealous. Everybody knows you never had any more morals than a tom-cat on the back fence. It's a lucky thing the boy didn't take after you, isn't it? He doesn't, not a bit. No, Harry Pendomer is the puniest black-haired little wretch, whereas your other son, sir, resembles his mother and is in consequence a ravishingly beautiful person of superlative charm—"
 
He was staring at her so oddly that she paused. So Patricia was familiar with that old scandal which ............