As yet Lady Perivale had taken no trouble to discover how the slanderous story had been circulated, or who the people were who pretended to have met her. She could not bring herself to search out the details of a scandal that so outraged all her feelings—her pride, her self-respect, her belief in friendship and human kindness.
She had made no attempt to justify herself. She had accepted the situation in a spirit of dogged resentment, and she faced her little world with head erect, and eyes that gave scorn for scorn, and the only sign of feeling was the fever spot that burnt on her cheek sometimes, when she passed the friends of last year.
She had been living in Grosvenor Square more than a month, and her drawing-room windows were wide open on a balcony full of May flowers, when the butler announced—
"Lady Morningside," and a stout, comfortable-looking matron, in a grey satin pelisse and an early victorian bonnet, rolled in upon her solitude.
"My dear, I am so glad to find you at home and alone," said Lady Morningside, shaking hands in her hearty fashion, and seating herself in a capacious grandfather chair. "I have come for a confidential talk. I only came to London three days ago. I have been at Wiesbaden about these wretched eyes of mine. He can't do much," name understood, "but he does something, and that keeps my spirits up."
"I am so sorry you have been suffering."
"Oh, it wasn't very bad. An excuse for being away."
"You have been at Wiesbaden, Marchioness? Then you haven't heard——-"
"What? How handsome you are lookin'. But a little too pale."
"You haven't heard that I am shunned like an influenza patient, on account of a miserable slander that I am utterly unable to focus or to refute."