‘Lady Maulevrier!’ announced the groom of the chambers; and Lady Denyer moved at least three paces forward to meet her guest.

The lady who entered, with slow and stately movements and proudly balanced head, might have served for a model as Juno or the Empress Livia.  She was still in the bloom of youth, at most seven-and-twenty, but she had all the calm assurance of middle-age.  No dowager, hardened by the varied experiences of a quarter of a century in the great world, could have faced society with more perfect coolness and self-possession.  She was beautiful, and she let the world see that she was conscious of her beauty, and the power that went along with it.  She was clever, and she used her cleverness with unfailing tact and unscrupulous audacity.  She had won her place in the world as an acknowledged beauty, and one of the leaders of fashion.  Two years ago she had been the glory and delight of Anglo-Indian society in the city of Madras, ruling that remote and limited kingdom with a despotic power.  Then all of a sudden she was ordered, or she ordered her physician to order her, an immediate departure from that perilous climate, and she came back to England with her three-year-old son, two Ayahs, and four European servants, leaving her husband, Lord Maulevrier, Governor of the Madras Presidency, to finish the term of his service in an enforced widowhood.

She returned to be the delight of London society.  She threw open the family mansion in Curzon Street to the very best people, but to those only.  She went out a great deal, but she was never seen at a second-rate party.  She had not a single doubtful acquaintance upon her visiting list.  She spent half of every year at the family seat in Scotland, was a miracle of goodness to the poor of her parish, and taught her boy his alphabet.

Lord Denyer came forward while his wife and Lady Maulevrier were shaking hands, and greeted her with more than his usual cordiality.  Colonel Madison watched for the privilege of a recognising nod from the divinity.  Sir Jasper Paulet, a legal luminary of the first brilliancy, likely to be employed for the Crown if there should be an inquiry into Lord Maulevrier’s conduct out yonder, came to press Lady Maulevrier’s hand and murmur a tender welcome.

She accepted their friendliness as a matter of course, and not by the faintest extra quiver of the tremulous stars which glittered in a circlet above her raven hair did she betray her consciousness of the cloud that darkened her husband’s reputation.  Never had she appeared gayer, or more completely satisfied with herself and the world in which she lived.  She was ready to talk about anything and everything—­the newly-wedded queen, and the fortunate Prince, whose existence among us had all the charm of novelty—­of Lord Melbourne’s declining health—­and Sir Robert Peel’s sliding scale—­mesmerism—­the Oxford Tracts—­the latest balloon ascent—­the opera—­Macready’s last production at Drury lane—­Bulwer’s new novel—­that clever little comic paper, just struggling into popularity—­what do you call the thing—­Punch?—­yes, Punch, or the London Charivari—­a much more respectable paper than its Parisian prototype.