"Find out! What?"
"The scandal, Grace—a scandal that touches you."
"What scandal can touch me? Scandal! Why, I have never done anything in my life that the most malignant gossip in London could turn to my disadvantage."
Her indignant eyes, her full, strong voice, answered for her truth.
"Oh, Grace, I knew, I knew there couldn't be anything in it. A wicked lie, a cowardly attack upon a pure-minded woman—a woman of spotless character; the last woman upon this earth to give ground for such a story."
"Oh, Sue, if you love me, be coherent! What is the story? Who is the slanderer?"
"Heaven knows how it began! My Duchess told me. I spoke of you the other day at our tête-à-tête luncheon. I told her about your lovely voice, your passion for music. She nodded her old wig in a supercilious way. 'I have heard her sing,' she said curtly. She waited till the servants left the room, and then asked me if it was possible I had not heard the scandal about Lady Perivale."
"What scandal? Oh, for pity's sake come to that, Sue. Never mind your Duchess."
"Well, I'll tell you in the most brutal way. It seems that three or four people, whose names I haven't discovered, declare they met you in Algiers, and in Corsica and Sardinia, travelling with Colonel Rannock—travelling with Colonel Rannock—passing as his wife, under a nom de guerre—Mr. and Mrs. Randall."
"How utterly disgusting and absurd! But what on earth can have made them imagine such a thing?"