"Indeed!"
"A libel—a most audacious libel," said Faunce, taking a paper from his pocket.
"Where? where? What paper?" Grace and Sue exclaimed excitedly.
"Strange to say, in a society paper of most respectable character, though of a somewhat limited circulation," replied Faunce; "a paper which, to my knowledge, has never offended in this manner until now—the Bon Ton and Cricket Review, a journal printed at Kennington, and mostly circulated in the South of London."
He handed the paper to Lady Perivale, who turned the leaves hurriedly, too agitated to read a line for the first few minutes.
It was an eminently proper paper—a paper that told of dances at Tooting, private theatricals at Norwood, and At Homes at Tulse Hill, a paper that described dresses and millinery, and gave receipts for cornflower creams and jellies made without wine, for cleaning kid gloves and making golden hair-dye. Pages were devoted to the Oval, and other pages to school cricket. There was the usual short story of the ultra-smart world. There was a Denmark Hill celebrity at home. There was everything nice and proper that a Society paper should have; and there, amidst all this respectability—like a hideous wen upon a handsome face—appeared three atrocious paragraphs about Lady Perivale's tête-à-tête tour with Colonel Rannock; the first setting forth the surprise of the lady's friends on meeting her travelling alone with a man of dubious character; the second debating whether the freedom of fin-de-siècle manners would not permit of any lady travelling with any gentleman without causing scandal; the third, of a somewhat grosser tone, winding up with a couplet from Pope:
"Nor Cæsar's empress would I deign to prove,
No, make me mistress to the man I love."
"It's abominable!" cried Grace, flushing crimson, and throwing down the paper in a rage.
"And you tell me I'm not to horsewhip the scoundrel who wrote that!" said Haldane, who had read the paragraphs over her shoulder.
"I do—most decidedly," answered Faunce, edging away from him with an involuntary movement. "We wanted a libel—a gross libel—and we've got it. We are going to bring an action against the proprietor of the Bon Ton, but we are not going to put ourselves in the wrong by assaulting him first. No, sir, we shall proceed against the proprietor, editor, and printer of the Bon Ton, and we shall ask for exemplary damages."