Two days afterwards it happened that the Duchess of Lancashire was at home to her more select circle of intimates and courtiers, among the latter being Dormer Greetland, whose profession it was to go everywhere, that is to say, to every house worth entering where he could get admittance. It was the eve of the great libel trial, the last stage which it was now confidently expected would triumphantly exonerate Countess Alexia von Rohnburg from the stigma she had borne.
“I suppose it is quite certain that the Countess will come out of it with flying colours?” Lady Rotherfield enquired of the society newsvendor, a little anxiously, seeing that, after a period of avoidance which might be called judicious or snobbish, according to one’s mental view of the conduct of her tribe, she had that very afternoon left cards at the tabooed house in Green Street.
“She is bound to, on this man Campion’s evidence,” Greetland assured her sympathetically. “They say the newspaper men are quite prepared for at least a month’s imprisonment and a thousand pounds fine, which, of course, means nothing to a man like Brailsford. They say he has given Burwoods carte blanche to furnish his room in Holloway in the most elaborate fashion.”
“Ah!” Lady Rotherfield did not much care about the peccant editors and their schemes for minimizing the rigours of an enforced sojourn in an unfashionable latitude. She was more interested in her tactical mistake towards the von Rohnburgs who might still be a power in her world.
“I suppose,” she murmured, “everybody has been holding off a little? Of course things did at one time look very black against the poor Countess.”
Greetland gave a shrug of sympathy which conveyed a sort of confession of apology for pardonable short-sightedness. “One hardly liked to call while the case hung in the balance,” he protested. “It would have seemed intrusive and prying; and, naturally, one hates the idea of that.”
So spoke Mr. Dormer Greetland whose whole existence was one long intrusion, and for whom earth held no greater pleasure than was to be derived from prying and the impertinent study of other folks’ weaknesses and distress.
“Ah, then people have not been calling? I wanted to ask you, Mr. Greetland. You always know the rights and wrongs of everything, and nowadays people, who ought to know better, are given to such provoking inaccuracies, don’t you know.”
The recognized fountain of scandal and arbiter of the latest correct conduct accepted the compliment as merely a truism. “It is a pity,” he pronounced, “that ignorant people will prattle absurdities, and that they find others to believe them. Why, I can assure you, Lady Rotherfield, that I have to spend half my time in contradicting the most ridiculous fairy tales that idiots rush about with. It is enough to disgust one with the present state of things in society.”