"My dear creature, do I ever say anything that isn't true? There is no need to invent things. God knows the things people do are bad enough, and wild enough, to supply conversation for everybody. But this about Hamleigh and Stella Mayne is as well known as the Albert Memorial. He was positively infatuated about her; took her off the stage: she was in the back row of the ballet at Drury Lane, salary seventeen and sixpence a week. He lived with her in Italy for a year; then they came back to England, and he gave her a house in St. John's Wood; squandered his money upon her; had her educated; worshipped her, in fact; and, I am told, would have married her, if she had only behaved herself. Fortunately, these women never do behave themselves: they show the cloven-foot too soon; our people only go wrong after marriage. But I hope, my dear, you will not allow yourself to be worried by this business. It is all a thing of the past, and Hamleigh will make just as good a husband as if it had never happened; better, perhaps, for he will be all the more able to appreciate a pure-minded girl like your niece."
Mrs. Tregonell listened with a stony visage. She was thinking of Leonard—Leonard who had never done wrong, in this way, within his mother's knowledge—who had been cheated out of his future wife by a flashy trickster—a man who talked like a poet, and who yet had given his first passionate love, and the best and brightest years of his life to a stage-dancer.
"How long is it since Mr. Hamleigh has ceased to be devoted to Miss Mayne?" she asked, in a cold, dull voice.
"I cannot say exactly: one hears so many different stories; there were paragraphs in the Society papers last season: 'A certain young sprig of fashion, a general favourite, whose infatuation for a well-known actress has been a matter of regret among the haute volée, is said to have broken his bonds. The lady keeps her diamonds, and threatens to publish his letters,' and so on, and so forth. You know the kind of thing?"
"I do not," said Mrs. Tregonell. "I have never taken any interest in such paragraphs."
"Ah! that is the consequence of vegetating at the fag-end of England: all the pungency is taken out of life for you."
Mrs. Tregonell asked no further questions. She had made up her mind that any more detailed information, which she might require, must be obtained from another channel. She did not want this battered woman of the world to know how hard she was hit. Yes—albeit there was a far-off gleam of light amidst this darkness—she was profoundly hurt by the knowledge of Angus Hamleigh's wrong-doing. He had made himself very dear to her—dear from the tender association of the past—dear for his own sake. She had believed him a man of scrupulous honour, of pure and spotless life. Perhaps she had taken all this for granted, in her rustic simplicity, seeing that all his ideas and instincts were those of a gentleman. She had made no allowance for the fact that the will-o'-the-wisp, passionate love, may lure even a gentleman into swampy ground; and that his sole superiority over profligates of coarser clay will be to behave himself like a gentleman in those morasses whither an errant fancy has beguiled him.
"I hope you will not let this influence your feelings towards Mr. Hamleigh," said Lady Cumberbridge; "if you did so, I should really feel sorry for having told you. But you must inevitably have heard the story from somebody else before long."
"No doubt. I suppose everybody knows it."
"Why yes, it was tolerably notorious. They used to be seen everywhere together. Mr. Hamleigh seemed proud of his infatuation, and there were plenty of men in his own set to encourage him. Modern society has adopted Danton's motto, don't you know?—de l'audace, encore de l'audace et toujours de l'audace! And now I must go and get my siesta, or I shall be as stupid as an owl all the evening. Good-bye."