Judith Lee-Harrison, for it was she, went over to the mantelpiece and consulted a little carriage-clock which stood upon it.
It was barely three months since her marriage, though to judge from the great, if undefinable change which had passed over her, it might have been the same number of years.
Her beauty indeed had ripened and deepened, so that it would have been impossible for the least observant person to pass it by, and the little over emphasis of fashion which had hitherto marred the perfect distinction of her appearance, had vanished.
“Mrs. Lee-Harrison would be a beauty if she cared about it,” is the verdict of the world to which she had been introduced little more than a month ago.
But it was sufficiently evident that Mrs. Lee-Harrison did not care.
There was something almost austere in the pose of the head and figure, the lines of the mouth, the look in the wonderful eyes.
Those eyes, to a close observer indeed told that Judith had learnt many things, had grown strangely wise these last three months.
Yes, she knew now more clearly what before she had only dimly and instinctively felt: the nature and extent of the wrong which had been perpetrated; which had been dealt her; which she in her turn had dealt herself and another person.
She stood idly by the mantelpiece, staring at the mass of invitation cards stuck into the mirror above it.
One of them told that Lady Kemys would be at home that night in Grosvenor Place at nine o’clock. It was to be a political party, and like all such gatherings would begin early, for which reason she had dressed before dinner.