Chapter 1

"That small, small, imperceptible
Small talk! that cuts like powdered glass
Ground in Tophana,--who can tell
Where lurks the power the poison has?"

There is the desolation of riches as well as the desolation of
poverty--the empty splendour of a large house in which there is no
going and coming of family life, no sound of light footsteps and
youthful laughter--only spacious rooms and fine furniture, and one
solitary figure moving silently amidst the vacant grandeur. This sense
of desolation, of a melancholy silence and emptiness, came upon Lady
Perivale on her return to the mansion in Grosvenor Square, which was
among the numerous good things of this world that had fallen into her
lap, seven years ago, when she made one of the best matches of the
season.

She had not sold herself to an unloved suitor. She had been sincerely
attached to Sir Hector Perivale, and had sincerely mourned him when,
after two years of domestic happiness, he died suddenly, in the prime
of life, from the consequences of a chill caught on his grouse moor in
Argyleshire, where he and his young wife, and a few chosen pals, made
life a perpetual picnic, and knew no enemy but foul weather.

This time the enemy was Death. A neglected cold turned to pneumonia,
and Grace Perivale was a widow.

"It does seem hard lines," whispered Hector, when he knew that he was
doomed. "We have had such a good time, Grace; and it's rough on me to
leave you."

No child had been born of that happy union, and Grace found herself
alone in the world at one and twenty, in full possession of her
husband's fortune, which was princely, even according to the modern
standard by which incomes are measured--a fortune lying chiefly
underground, in Durham coalfields, secure from change as the earth
itself, and only subject to temporary diminution from strikes,
or bad times. She needed a steady brain to deal with such large
responsibilities, for she had not been born or reared among the
affluent classes. In her father's East Anglian Rectory the main
philosophy of life had been to do without things.

Her husband had none but distant relations, whom he had kept at a
distance; so there were no interfering brothers or sisters, no prying
aunts or officious uncles to worry her with good advice. She stood
alone, with a castle on the Scottish border, round whose turrets the
seamews wheeled, and at whose base the German Ocean rolled in menacing
grandeur, one of the finest houses in Grosvenor Square, and an income
that was described by her friends and the gossiping Press at anything
you like between twenty and fifty thousand a year.

So rich, so much alone, Lady Perivale was naturally capricious. One
of her caprices was to hate her castle in Northumberland, and to love
a hill-side villa on the Italian Riviera, two or three miles from a
small seaport, little known to travellers, save as a ragged line of
dilapidated white houses straggling along the sea front, past which the
Mediterranean express carried them, indifferent and unobservant, on
their journey between Marseilles and Genoa.

It was Lady Perivale's whim to spend her winters in a spot unknown
to Rumpelmeyer and fashion--a spot where smart frocks were out of
place; where royalty-worship was impossible, since not the smallest
princeling had ever been heard of there; and where for the joy of
life one had only the sapphire sea and the silvery grey of the olive
woods, perpetual roses, a lawn carpeted with anemones, sloping banks
covered with carnations, palms, and aloes, orange and lemon trees,
hedges of pale pink geranium, walls tapestried with the dark crimson
of the Bougainvilliers, the delicate mauve of the wistaria; and balmy
winds which brought the scent of the flowers and the breath of the sea
through the open windows.

Lady Perivale came back to London in April, when the flower-girls were
selling bunches of purple lilac, and Bond Street seemed as full of
lemon-coloured carriages and picture-hats as if it were June. It was
the pleasant season after Easter, the season of warm sunshine and cold
winds, when some people wore sables and others wore lace, the season of
_bals blancs_ and friendly dinners, before the May Drawing Room and the
first State concert, before the great entertainments which were to be
landmarks in the history of the year.

How empty the three drawing-rooms looked, in a perspective of white and
gold; how black and dismal the trees in the square, as Grace Perivale
stood at one of the front windows, looking out at the smooth lawns
and well-kept shrubbery, in the pale English sunlight. She thought of
the ineffable blue of the Mediterranean, the grey and green and gold
and purple of the olive wood, and the orange and lemon grove sloping
down to the sea from her verandah, where the Safrano roses hung like a
curtain of pale yellow blossom over the rustic roof.

"And yet there are people who like London better than Italy," she
thought.

Two footmen came in with the tables for tea.

"In the little drawing-room," she said, waving them away from the
accustomed spot.

The spaciousness of the room chilled her. The Louis Seize furniture was
all white and gold and silvery blue--not too much gold. An adept in
the furniture art had made the scheme of colour, had chosen the pale
blues and greys of the Aubusson carpet, the silvery sheen of the satin
curtains and sofa-covers. It was all pale and delicate, and intensely
cold.

"My letters?" she asked, when the men were retiring.

She had slept at Dover, and had come to London by an afternoon train.
She liked even the hotel at Dover better than this great house in
Grosvenor Square. There she had at least the sea to look at, and not
this splendid loneliness.

"Well," she thought, with a long-drawn sigh, "I must plunge into the
vortex again, another mill-round of lunches and dinners, theatres and
dances, park and Princes', Ranelagh and Hurlingham--the same things
over and over and over and over again. But, after all, I enjoy the
nonsense while I am in it, enjoy it just as much as the other people
do. We all go dancing round the fashionable maypole, in and out, left
hand here, right hand there, smiling, smiling, smiling, and quite
satisfied while it lasts. We only pretend to be bored."

The little drawing-room--twenty feet by fifteen--looked almost
comfortable. There was a bright fire in the low grate, reflected
dazzlingly in turquoise tiles, and the old-fashioned bow window was
filled with a bank of flowers, which shut out the view of the chimneys
and the great glass roof over the stable-yard.

Lady Perivale sank into one of her favourite chairs, and poured out a
cup of tea.

"Toujours cet azur banal," she said to herself, as she looked at the
pale blue china, remembering a line of Coppée's. "Poor Hector chose
this turquoise because he thought it suited my complexion, but how
ghastly it will make me look when I am old--to be surrounded by a
child-like prettiness--_vouée au bleu_, like a good little French
Catholic!"

The butler came in with her letters. Three, on a silver salver that
looked much too large for them.

"These cannot possibly be all, Johnson," she said; "Mrs. Barnes must
have the rest."

"Mrs. Barnes says these are all the letters, my lady."

"All! There must be some mistake. You had better ask the other
servants."

Her butler and her maid had been with her in Italy--no one else; the
butler, elderly and devoted, a man who had grown up in the Perivale
family; her maid, also devoted, a native of her father's parish, whom
she had taught as a child in the Sunday school, when scarcely more
than a child herself, not a very accomplished attendant for a woman of
fashion, but for a parson's daughter, who wore her own hair and her
own eyebrows, the country-bred girl was handy enough, nature having
gifted her with brains and fingers that enabled her to cope with the
complicated fastenings of modern frocks, changing every season.

Lady Perivale's letters had been accumulating for nearly a fortnight,
and her intended arrival in London had been announced in the _Times_
and a score of papers. She expected a mountain of letters and
invitations, such as had always greeted her return to civilization.

Of the three letters, two were circulars from fashionable milliners.
The third was from her old friend and singing mistress, Susan Rodney:--

"So glad you are coming back to town, my dear Grace. I shall call in
Grosvenor Square on Wednesday afternoon on the chance of finding you.

"Ever yours affectionately,

"Sue."

Miss Rodney answered every correspondent by return of post, and never
wrote a long letter.

Wednesday was Lady Perivale's afternoon at home, and this was
Wednesday. A double knock resounded through the silence of the hall and
staircase; and three minutes later the butler announced Miss Rodney.

"My sweet old Sue," cried Grace, "now this is really too good of you.
Words can't say how glad I am to see you."

They kissed each other like sisters, and then Susan seated herself
opposite her friend, and looked at her with a countenance that
expressed some strong feeling, affection mingled with sorrow--or was it
pity?

She was Grace's senior by more than ten years. She was good-looking
in her strong and rather masculine way--her complexion of a healthy
darkness, unsophisticated by pearl-powder, her features rugged, but not
ugly, her eyes bright and shrewd, but capable of tenderness, her gown
and hat just the right gown and hat for a woman who walked, or rode in
an omnibus or a hansom.

"Well, Sue, what's the news?" asked Grace, pouring out her visitor's
tea. "Is it a particularly dull season? Is nobody entertaining?"

"Oh, much as usual, I believe. I can only answer for my own friends and
patronesses--mostly Bayswater way--who are as anxious as ever to get a
little after-dinner music for nothing. They have to ask me to dinner,
though. No nonsense about that!"

"It isn't the songs only, Sue. They want an agreeable woman who can
talk well."

"Oh, I can chatter about most things; but I don't pretend to talk. I
can keep the ball rolling."

"Do you know, Sue, you find me in a state of profound mystification. I
never was so puzzled in my life. When I was leaving Italy I wired to
my people to keep back all my letters. I was ten days on the way home;
and instead of the usual accumulation of cards and things I find one
letter--yours."

"People don't know you are in town," Sue suggested slowly.

"Oh, but they do; for I sent the announcement to the _Times_ and the
_Post_ a fortnight ago. I really meant to be back sooner, but the
weather was too lovely. I stopped a couple of days at Bordighera and at
St. Raphael, and I was three days in Paris buying frocks. Not a single
invitation--not so much as a caller's card. One would think London was
asleep. Isn't it strange?"

"Yes," answered Sue, looking at her with an earnest, yet somewhat
furtive, scrutiny, "it is--very--strange."

"Well, dear, don't let us be solemn about it. No doubt the invitations
will come pouring in now I am at home. People have been too busy to
notice my name in the papers. There are always new women for the town
to run after. Wives of diamond men from Africa or oil men from America.
One cannot expect to keep one's place."

"No," assented Sue. "Society is disgustingly fickle."

"But I am not afraid of being forgotten by the people I like--the
really nice people, the pretty girls I have cultivated, and who make
a goddess of me, the clever women, worldly but large-minded--all the
people I like. I am not afraid of African competitors there. They will
stick to me," said Grace, with emphasis.

Her friend could see that she was troubled, though she affected to take
the matter easily. There was trouble in both faces, as the friends sat
opposite each other, with only the spindle-legged Louis Seize tea-table
between them; but the trouble in Susan Rodney's face was graver than in
Lady Perivale's.

"Tell me about your winter," said Grace, after a pause, during which
tea-cups had been refilled, and dainty cakelets offered and declined.

"Oh, the usual dull mechanic round; plenty of pupils, mostly suburban;
and one duchess, five and fifty, who thinks she has discovered a
magnificent contralto voice of which she was unaware till quite lately,
and desires me to develop it. We bawl the grand duet from Norma till we
are both hoarse, and then my duchess makes me stop and lunch with her,
and tells me her troubles."

"What are they?"

"I should have put it in the singular. When she talks of her troubles
she means her husband."

"Sue, you're trying to be vivacious; but there's something on your
mind. If it's any bother of your own, do tell me, dear, and let me help
you if I can."

"My tender-hearted Grace! You always wanted to help people. I remember
your coming to me with all your little pocket-money that dreadful
morning at the Rectory when I had a wire to say my mother was dying,
and had to rush back to town. And my dear Gracie thought I should be
hard up, and wanted to help me. That's nearly ten years ago. Well,
well! Such things live in one's memory. And your father, how kind, how
courteous he always was to the holiday music-mistress, and what a happy
time my summer holidays were in the dear old Rectory!"

"And what a lucky girl I was to get such a teacher and such a dear
friend for nothing!"

"Do you call bed and board, lavender-scented linen, cream _à
discrétion_, pony-cart, lawn tennis, luncheon parties, dinner at the
Squire's, a dance at the market town--do you call that nothing? Well,
the bargain suited us both, I think, and it was a pleasure to train
one of the finest mezzo-sopranos I know. And now, Gracie," slowly,
hesitatingly even, "what about your winter?"

"Five months of books, music, and idleness. My lotus land was never
lovelier. But for a January storm, that tore my roses and spoilt a
Bougainvilliers that covers half the house, I should hardly have known
it was winter."

"And were you quite alone all the time? No visitors?"

"Not a mortal! You know I go to my villa to read and think. When I am
tired of my own thoughts and other people's--one does tire occasionally
even of Browning, even of Shakespeare--I turn to my piano, and find
a higher range of thought in Beethoven. You know I go the pace all
through the London season, never shirk a dance, do three cotillons a
week, go everywhere, see everything."

"Yes, I know you have gone the pace, since your three years' mourning."

"After Cowes comes the reaction, a month or so in Northumberland, just
to show myself to my people, and see that the gardeners are doing their
duty; and then when the leaves begin to fall, away to my olive woods
and their perpetual grey. For half the year I revel in solitude. If you
would spend a winter with me I should be charmed, for you like the life
I like, and it would be a solitude _à deux_. But the common herd are
only good in cities. I come back to London to be sociable and amused."

Miss Rodney rose and put on her mantle.

"Can't you stop and dine? I'll send you snugly home in my brougham."

Home was a villa facing Regent's Park.

"Alas! dear, it's impossible! I am due in Cadogan Square at half-past
six--Islington and Chelsea 'bus from Regent-circus."

"A lesson?"

"Two lessons--sisters, and not an iota of voice between them. But I
shall make them sing. Give me a scrap of intelligence, and I can always
manage that. Good-bye, Grace. Ask me to dinner some other night, when
you are alone."

"Come to-morrow night, or the night after. I have no engagement, as you
know. Let us see a lot of each other before the rush begins."

"Friday night, then. Good-bye."

They kissed again. Lady Perivale rang the bell, and then followed her
friend towards the drawing-room door; but on her way there Miss Rodney
stopped suddenly, and burst into tears.

"Sue, Sue, what is it? I knew you had something on your mind. If it's
a money trouble, dear, make light of it, for it needn't plague you
another minute. I have more money than I know what to do with."

"No, no, no, dear; it's not money," sobbed Sue. "Oh, what a fool I
am--what a weak-minded, foolish fool!"

A footman opened the door, and looked with vacant countenance at the
agitated group. Early initiation in his superiors' domestic troubles
had taught him to compose his features when storms were raging.

"The door, James--presently," his mistress said, confusedly, watching
him leave the room with that incredible slowness with which such
persons appear to move when we want to get rid of them.

"Very foolish, if you won't trust your old friend Gracie!" she said,
making Sue sit down, and seating herself beside her, and then in
caressing tones, "Now, dear, tell me all your troubles. You know there
is no sorrow of yours--no difficulty--no complication--which would find
me unsympathetic. What is it?"

"Oh, Gracie, Gracie, my darling girl, it's not my trouble. It's yours."

"Mine?" with intense surprise.

"Yes, dear. I meant to have kept silence. I thought it was the only
course, in such a delicate matter. I meant to leave things alone--and
let you find out for yourself."

"Find out! What?"

"The scandal, Grace--a scandal that touches you."

"What scandal can touch me? Scandal! Why, I have never done anything
in my life that the most malignant gossip in London could turn to my
disadvantage."

Her indignant eyes, her full, strong voice, answered for her truth.

"Oh, Grace, I knew, I knew there couldn't be anything in it. A wicked
lie, a cowardly attack upon a pure-minded woman--a woman of spotless
character; the last woman upon this earth to give ground for such a
story."

"Oh, Sue, if you love me, be coherent! What is the story? Who is the
slanderer?"

"Heaven knows how it began! My Duchess told me. I spoke of you the
other day at our _tête-à-tête_ luncheon. I told her about your lovely
voice, your passion for music. She nodded her old wig in a supercilious
way. 'I have heard her sing,' she said curtly. She waited till the
servants left the room, and then asked me if it was possible I had not
heard the scandal about Lady Perivale."

"What scandal? Oh, for pity's sake come to that, Sue. Never mind your
Duchess."

"Well, I'll tell you in the most brutal way. It seems that three or
four people, whose names I haven't discovered, declare they met you
in Algiers, and in Corsica and Sardinia, travelling with Colonel
Rannock--travelling with Colonel Rannock--passing as his wife, under a
_nom de guerre_--Mr. and Mrs. Randall."

"How utterly disgusting and absurd! But what on earth can have made
them imagine such a thing?"

"People say you were seen--seen and recognized--by different people who
knew you, in one or the other of those places."

"Travelling with Colonel Rannock, as his wife! My God! A man I refused
three times. Three times," laughing hysterically. "Why, I have had
him on his knees in this room; kneeling, Sue, like a lover in an old
comedy; and I only laughed at him."

"That's rather a dangerous thing to do, Grace, with some men."

"Oh, Colonel Rannock is not the kind of man to start a vendetta for
a woman's laughter. He is a laughing philosopher himself, and takes
everything lightly."

"Does he? One never knows what there is behind that lightness. What if
Colonel Rannock has set this scandal on foot with a view to proposing a
fourth time, and getting himself accepted?"

"How could he make people swear they saw me--me!--at Algiers, when I
was in Italy? It is all nonsense Sue; an absurd _malentendu_; my name
substituted for some other woman's. Now I am in London, the matter
will be put straight in an hour. People have only to see me again to
be sure I am not that kind of woman. As for Colonel Rannock, he may be
dissipated, and a spendthrift; but he is well-born, and he ought to be
a gentleman."

"Who said he was ill-born? Surely, you know that there are good races
and bad. Who can tell when the bad blood came in, and the character of
the race began to degenerate? Under the Plantagenets, perhaps. Colonel
Rannock comes of a bad race--everybody knows that. His grandfather,
Lord Kirkmichael, was notorious in the Regency. He left his memoirs,
don't you know, to be published fifty years after his death--an awful
book--that had a _succès de scandale_ six or seven years ago. He was
bosom friend of Lord Hertford, and that set."

"I did not trouble myself about his grandfather."

"Ah! but you ought! A man's family history is the man. Lord
Kirkmichael's grandson would be capable of anything infamous."

"The whole thing is too preposterous for consideration," Lady Perivale
said angrily. "I wonder at your taking it tragically."

And then, recalling that empty salver instead of the usual pile of
letters and cards, she cried, distractedly--

"It is shameful--atrocious--that any one upon earth could believe such
a thing of me. It makes me hate the human race. Yes, and I shall always
hate those horrid wretches I called friends, however they may try to
make amends for this insolent neglect."

There was no question of taking the matter lightly now, for Grace
Perivale burst into a passion of sobs, and was quite as tragic as her
friend.

"My dearest Grace, pray, pray be calm! Don't stay in this odious
London, where people have no hearts. Why not go to your Northern
castle, and live there quietly till the mystery clears itself, as no
doubt it will soon?"

"Go?" cried Lady Perivale, starting up out of the drooping attitude
in which she had given way to her distress. "Beat a retreat? Why, if
Grosvenor Square were a fiery furnace I would stay and face those
wretches--those false, false friends--till I made them know the kind of
woman I am!"

"Well, dear, perhaps that is best--if you can stand it," Susan
answered, rather sadly.

"But where is Colonel Rannock? Surely he has not been dumb! It is his
business to bring the slanderers to book!"

"That's what I told the Duchess. But Rannock has not been seen in
London since the autumn, and is said to be shooting something in the
Rockies. And now, I must rush off to my lessons. Good-bye, again, dear.
Don't forget that I am to dine with you on Friday!"

"Shall I invite a party of twenty to meet you--an impromptu party,
asked by telegraph, such as I had last year to welcome me home?" Grace
asked, bitterly. "Go, dear! Don't be too sorry for me. I shall weather
the storm. I ought to be more amused than distressed by such nonsense."

Miss Rodney dried her tearful eyes, and composed her agitated features,
on her way downstairs. The footman stood ready to open the door,
stifling a yawn behind his hand. Miss Rodney gave a quick glance round
the hall, taking in all its spaciousness and splendour, the marble
group at the foot of the double staircase, the bronze and ormolu
candelabra, the crimson carpets, softer than forest moss.

"Rich beyond the dreams of avarice--and so unhappy!" she thought, as
she hurried off to catch the Chelsea 'bus.