"I do not know," she had replied. "I do not think there is anything to be done."
"Do you mean that he is to be allowed to go on like this, to drift to ruin without a hand to stay him?" demanded the old lady almost wrathfully; and the countess had turned on her angrily.
"Who can do anything to stay him? Have you yourself not said that it is impossible, that he must be left alone?"
"I did, yes, I did," admitted the old countess, "but things were not so bad then, not nearly. All this is different. There is a woman in the case, Ethel!"
"Yes," said the countess, bitterly, "there is," and she felt tempted to echo the assertion which Leycester had been reputed to utter, "that if there had been no women the world would have been worth living in."
Then Lady Longford had attempted to "get at" Leycester through his companion Lord Charles, but Lord Charles had plainly intimated his helplessness.
"Going wrong," he said, shaking his head. "If Leycester's going wrong, so am I, because, don't you see, I'm bound to go with him. Always did, you know, and can't leave him now; too late in the day."
"And so you'll let your bosom friend go to the dogs"—the old lady had almost used a stronger word—"rather than say a word to stop him?"
"Say a word!" retorted Lord Charles, ruefully. "I've said twenty. Only yesterday I told him the pace couldn't last; but he only laughed and told me that was his business, and that it would last long enough for him."
"Lord Charles, you are a fool!" exclaimed the old lady.