"The other woman must have been very handsome once," Mrs. Ladd pronounced. "I wonder who she was!" Mrs. Lenoir's air of past greatness often caused people to speak of her in a corresponding tense.
"Winnie Maxon's looking well, too. I think she's somehow changed; don't you, Mrs. Ladd? There's a new air about her, it seems to me—a sort of assured air she hadn't before."
"My dear, she must carry it off! That's the meaning of it."
"I wonder!" Lady Rosaline was not satisfied. Her memory of Winnie, slight as it was, reminded her quite definitely that Cyril Maxon's wife possessed a rather timid air, a deprecatory manner. The woman over there was in no way self-assertive or 'loud,' but she seemed entirely self-possessed and self-reliant, and was talking in an animated fashion. Mrs. Ladd looked again.
"Cyril said she accused him of tyrannizing over her. I'm sure she doesn't look as if she'd been tyrannized over," she remarked. "All nonsense, I've no doubt."
Lady Rosaline made no answer; she merely went on looking. But she could not forget that many months had passed since Winnie ended her married life with Cyril Maxon.
No encounter between the two couples occurred that night; indeed Mrs. Lenoir and Winnie remained unconscious of the scrutiny to which they were subjected, and of the presence of the ladies who were conducting it. Wearied by travel they went early to bed, and Mrs. Ladd, feeling immediately very dull, went and hunted out an elderly novel from the drawing-room shelves. Lady Rosaline did not read; she sat on idly in the hall—thinking still of Winnie, and of Mrs. Ladd's remark which she herself had not answered. Should she—could she—question the one person who might give it a pertinent answer? Could even she answer to any purpose? That is, would Winnie's experience and opinion be any guide to Lady Rosaline in settling her own problem? Perhaps it would be strange to question, and perhaps no answer, useless or useful, would be forthcoming. Yet, on the other hand, it might be possible to get some light. These thoughts engrossed her mind till she went discontentedly to bed, and, even after she had got into bed, remained to vex and puzzle her still. But there was really no doubt what, in the end, she would do. She was bound to try. Both curiosity and personal interest drove her on. They were too strong to be suppressed, either by the fear of a snub or by the doubt of useful results.
The next morning, directly after breakfast, she went out on to the broad terrace in front of the hotel, and sat down on a bench close by the main doorway. No one could leave the house without her seeing. She reckoned on the new-comers being early afoot, to explore their surroundings; she even surmised that the young woman would very likely be out before her elderly companion—and that (said Lady Rosaline's secret thoughts) would afford the best chance of all. She put up her parasol and waited. She was safe from Mrs. Ladd, whom she did not want at that moment, for Mrs. Ladd was upstairs, repairing some ravages suffered by one of her gowns.
"It's a funny situation!" So Lady Rosaline reflected, and she wondered, in a whimsical mood of speculation, what Cyril Maxon himself would think of it. "What I really want to do is to ask for his character from his last place!" Yes, that was what it came to; and the parallel held good still further, in that it was quite likely that the character would not tell her very much, would not show whether the applicant were likely to suit her, however well or ill he had suited in his previous situation. Still, it must surely reveal something about him or about his wife herself; even knowledge about the wife who had left Maxon would be, in a way, knowledge about Maxon himself. But it was an odd situation. What would Cyril think of it?
A surprising number of people came out of that doorway before Winnie; but in the end Lady Rosaline's forecast was justified. Winnie did come out, and she came out alone. She wore her hat, carried a parasol, and walked with a quick step, as though she were bound on an expedition. Lady Rosaline rose from her chair, and intercepted her.