The campaign of rehabilitation had not been an unqualified success. Lady Knightrider aimed at reconciling Barbara with her relations rather than at reconciling her relations with her friends. There was an implied threat that she must choose one or the other; and a prevalent feeling was crystallized by Jack Waring, when he said that she was not worth knowing at the price of having to know her disorderly retinue. While she welcomed the concordat, Lady Barbara could not explain to Sir Adolf Erckmann that he was her fit companion one day and unfit the next; she might gently repel a cosmopolitan here and there, but she could not refuse all their invitations always; loyalty imposed its obligations, and stronger than loyalty was an impatient desire to tell other people to mind their own business. Yet the concordat might have endured, if the discussion of Arden's hypothetical book had not impelled Lady Knightrider hot-foot from Mrs. Shelley's house to his rooms at the Ritz. Not content with her legitimate relief at finding that "Princess Juanita" was no less a myth than "The New Jerusalem," she confided to Arden that dear Barbara did go about with "really rather dreadful people"; some one at her party had said that the girl's friends were such that he preferred not to know her. So long as she associated with them, it was only too probable that there would be another unpleasantness of some kind.
"I really think it my duty," she said on leaving, "to drop a little hint to my sister."
The nods and winks of verbal warning are apt to take on an exaggerated significance when defined in black and white. On receipt of the letter Lord Crawleigh motored to London and opened a new commission of enquiry to investigate the personal desirability of his daughter's associates. If Lady Barbara was at first bewildered, she was in no way daunted, for in the endless intermingling of groups throughout London she could usually find a sponsor for the most draggled of her friends. Sir Adolf Erckmann's private life might lead him into the Divorce Court, he might even be the "vulgar, common fellow" that her father described, but he had dined in Berkeley Square as a member of Lord Crawleigh's Departmental Committee on Indian Currency Reform. Lady Crawleigh always went to the vulgar, common fellow's famous musical parties in Westbourne Terrace. Lady Barbara had originally met Mrs. Welman at a performance of "The School for Scandal," organized by Lady Maitland for charity, and had naturally accepted the implied guarantee; it was not against civil, canon or moral law for a woman to have been on the stage. Those who, like Webster, could not so easily be defended were pushed into the background. The battle of wits ceased to be amusing when Lord Crawleigh repeated his threat that Barbara would not be allowed to go anywhere unless she were suitably chaperoned. The dreary banishment at the Abbey lingered in her memory as a summer stolen out of her life. As her patience ebbed, she decided that there must be an end of these inquisitions.
It was easy to trace her present plight through Lady Knightrider to Val Arden; but there was some one behind Arden, for her father claimed to have chapter and verse for saying that people were refusing to know her so long as she associated with her present friends. With a shock of surprise she recalled a self-satisfied young man who had in fact met her invitation to be introduced with a drawling, "Thanks very much. She may be all you say, but...."
It was incredible that one bumptious boy could do so much harm.... Even when the commission adjourned without arriving at an agreed report, Lady Barbara felt that a vendetta was being forced upon her....
She had no plan of campaign and knew nothing of her adversary but his name. Apart from Gerry Deganway she did not know of any one who was acquainted with him; and Deganway had done enough harm already without being given new opportunities. But, if the vendetta required resource, resource should be forthcoming. She called on Sonia Dainton the day after her father's inquisition and proposed that they should go for a drive. As the car entered the Park by Albert Gate, she pretended to recognize a face and said:
"Wasn't that Jack Waring?"
"I didn't see," Sonia answered.
"It was like him—though I don't know him to speak to."