Mr. Wootton is shocked. "Oh, Lady Usk! Reputation! You couldn't think I meant to imply of any guest of yours—only, you know, he was secretary in Petersburg when he was Lord Baird, and so——"
"Well, it doesn't follow that he is the lover of every woman in Petersburg!"
Mr. Wootton is infinitely distressed. "Oh, indeed I didn't mean anything of that sort."
"You did mean everything of that sort," murmurs his hostess.
"But, you see, he admired her very much, was constantly with her, and yesterday I saw they didn't speak to each other, so I was curious to know what could be the reason."
"I believe she didn't recognize him."
Mr. Wootton smiles. "Oh, ladies have such prodigious powers of oblivion—and remembrance!"
"Yes," observes Usk, with complacency: "the storms of memory sometimes sink into them as if they were sponges, and sometimes glide off them as if they were ducks. It is just as they find it convenient. But Madame Sabaroff can't have been more than a child when Gervase was in Russia."
Mr. Wootton smiles again significantly. "She was married."
"To a brute!" cries Dorothy Usk.