“But it's the other,” she presently did continue, “it's the young woman with her. Of course one has read of such things in the papers—one knows that they are done—but when they happen under one's own eyes, in one's own set! And she a Pontycroft! The other, the young woman with Lucilla Dor,—oh, it's quite too disgraceful.”
Again Mrs. Wilberton shook her head, this time with a kind of horrified violence, causing the jet spray in her bonnet to dance and twinkle, and again she sank back in her chair.
Bertram sat forward on the edge of his, hands clasping its arms. “Yes? Yes?” he prompted.
“She's an American,” said Mrs. Wilberton, speaking with an effect of forced calm. “Her name is Ruth Adgate. She's an American of worse than common extraction, but she's immensely rich. It's really difficult to see in what she's better than an ordinary adventuress, but she has a hundred thousand pounds a year. And she's bought the Pontycrofts—Henry Pontycroft and his sister—she's bought them body and soul.”
Her voice indicated a full stop, and she allowed her face and attitude to relax, as one whose painful message was delivered.
But Bertram looked perplexed. An adventuress? Of worse than common extraction? That fresh young girl, with her prettiness, her fineness? His impulse was to cry out, “Allons donc!” And then—the Pontycrofts? Frowning perplexity, he repeated his visitor's words: “Bought the Pontycrofts? I don't think I understand.”
“Oh, it's a thing that's done,” Mrs. Wilberton assured him, on a note that was like a wail. “One knows that it is done. It's a part of the degeneracy of our times. But the Pontycrofts! One would have thought them above it. And the Adgate woman! One would have thought that even people who are willing to sell themselves must draw the line somewhere. But no. Money is omnipotent. So, for money, the Pontycrofts have taken her to their bosoms; presented her; introduced her to every one; and they'll end, of course, by capturing a title for her. Another 'international marriage.' Another instance of American gold buying the due of well-born English girls over their heads.”
Bertram smiled,—partly, it may be, at the passion his guest showed, but partly from relief. He had dreaded what was coming: what had come was agreeably inconclusive and unconvincing.
“I see,” he said. “But surely this seems in the last degree improbable. What makes you think it?”
“Oh, it isn't that I think it,” Mrs. Wilberton cried, with a movement that lifted the matter high above the plane of mere personal opinion; “it's known,—it's known.”