Mrs. Carraby came a little further into the room. She sank into an easy-chair and sat there. Her hands were tightly clenched, her face was hard and cold, her tone icy. Yet one felt that underneath a tempest was raging.
"You know, Algernon," she went on, "we had some hard times when you first began to make your way a little. When we first took this house, even, things weren't altogether easy. Americans can come from nowhere, do the most outrageous things in the world, and take London by storm. London, on the other hand, is cruel to English people who have only their money. She was cruel to us, Algernon, but with all the snubs and all the difficulties I ever had, nothing has ever happened to me like to-day."
"You'll get over it."
"Get over it!" she repeated. "Yes, but I thought that that sort of thing was at an end. I thought that when you were a Cabinet Minister no one would dare to treat me as though I were a social nobody."
"You must remember that the Duchess has a special reason," he reminded her. "I suppose it's that Portel affair."
"Yes," Mrs. Carraby agreed, "it is the Portel affair."
They were both silent. There wasn't much to be said, for the moment.
"Have you heard," he inquired presently, "whether Lady Anne is with him in Paris?"
"No," she replied. "Somehow or other, people don't seem to talk scandal about Lady Anne. They say that she is staying for a time with an old friend there. Algernon!"
"Yes?"