The only member of the party who had really interested him had been Cora Hartsilver, and that was due perhaps to the fact that La Planta had told him that she had lost her brothers in the war. Yootha Hagerston, too, he had rather liked; the “atmosphere” surrounding both these women was quite different he at once realized, from the “atmosphere” of Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson and the men who, so Blenkiron had told him, were her particular friends.
And yet, before he had been long in Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson’s beautifully appointed house in Cavendish Square, its luxury and the sense of ease and comfort the whole of her entourage exhaled began to have its effect upon him. He was not a card-player, but music at all times appealed to him intensely, and as he lay back among the cushions in a great soft arm-chair which Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson had specially prepared for him, and listened with rapt attention to Tchaikowsky’s wonderful “None but the Weary Heart,” sung with violin obligato, those thoughts of the horrors he had witnessed “out there,” which so perpetually haunted him, faded completely from his mind, and even the dull, throbbing pain in his injured leg became for the time forgotten.
At last the music ceased, and he became conscious of conversation in subdued tones at his elbow. The speakers were late arrivals, and as he caught the name “Hartsilver” his attention became focused on what was being said.
“A terrible affair—and his wife over there, talking, knows nothing about it as yet.”
“When did it happen?”
“About midday. It must have been premeditated, because when he was found dead in his bath he had opened an artery with a razor.”
CHAPTER III.
THE HIDDEN SCANDAL.
During the nine months which had passed since Henry Hartsilver had been found dead in his bath, many things had happened. The war was over, and people were already beginning to forget the discomfort, for some the misery, of those five long years. In London the wheels of life, their spoke having been removed, were slowly beginning to revolve once more.
The thousands who had “done their bit,” and become impoverished in consequence, were many of them cursing the impetuosity which had led them to forget their own interests in their anxiety to help to avenge the outrages in Belgium and France, and to save their own country from possible disaster. On the other hand many thousands of men and women who before the war had been struggling small traders, now contemplated with a feeling of smug satisfaction their swollen bank balances, and, while thanking heaven there had been a war, began to adopt a style of living which, though it ill became them, gratified their vanity enormously.