“I didn’t expect to find you giving a party to-day.”
“They insisted on coming, and I had to do something to celebrate my triumph.” She laughed lightly. “Mon Dieu! you don’t know what a narrow shave it was. Did you read my cross-examination? It was that which saved me.”
“Saved you from what?” cried Basil sternly, two lines of anger appearing between his brows. “Has it saved you from shameful dishonour? Yes, I read every word. At first I couldn’t believe it was true.”
“Et après?” asked Lady Vizard calmly.
“But it was true; there were a dozen people to prove it. Oh God, how could you! I admired you more than anyone else in the world. . . . I thought of your shame, and I came here because I wanted to help you. Don’t you understand the horrible disgrace of it? Oh, mother, mother, you can’t go on like this! Heaven knows I don’t want to blame you. Come away with me, and let us go to Italy and start afresh. . . .”
In the midst of his violent speech he was stopped by the amusement of Lady Vizard’s cold eyes.
“But you talk as if I’d been divorced. How absurd you are! In that case it might have been better to go away for a bit, yet even then I should have faced it. But d’you think I’m going to run away now? Pas si bête, mon petit!”
“D’you mean to say you’re going to stay here when everyone knows what you are—when they’ll point at you in the street, and whisper to one another foul stories? And however foul they are, they’ll be true.”
Lady Vizard shrugged her shoulders.
“Oh, que tu m’assomes!” she said scornfully, justly proud of her French accent. “You know me very little if you think I’m going to hide myself in some pokey Continental town, or add another tarnished reputation the declassée society of Florence. I mean to stay here. I the opera, at the races, everywhere. I’ve got some good friends who’ll stick to me, and you’ll see in a couple of years I shall pull through. After all, I’ve done little more than plenty of others, and if the bourgeois knows a good deal about me that he didn’t know before—je m’en bats l’oeil. I’ve got rid of my pig of a husband, and, for that the whole thing was almost worth it. After all, he knew what was going on; he only rounded on me because he was afraid I spent too much.”