“I am marked,” she persisted, “wherever I go I may be known, as you knew me here.  If it hadn’t been you it would have been somebody else, and I should have known of it indirectly instead of directly; but even supposing I had escaped altogether at this hotel, the next one would probably have made up for it.”

“Do you stay much in hotels?”

There had been something in the mellow voice which made such a question only natural, yet it was scarcely asked before I would have given a good deal to recall it.

“There is nowhere else to stay,” said Mrs. Lascelles, “unless one sets up house alone, which is costlier and far less comfortable.  You see, one does make a friend or two sometimes—­before one is found out.”

“But surely your people—­”

This time I did check myself.

“My people,” said Mrs. Lascelles, “have washed their hands of me.”

“But Major Lascelles—­surely his people—­”

“They washed their hands of him!  You see, they would be the first to tell you, he had always been rather wild; but his crowning act of madness in their eyes was his marriage.  It was worse than the worst thing he had ever done before.  Still, it is not for me to say anything, or feel anything, against his family....”

And then I knew that they were making her an allowance; it was more than I wanted to know; the ground was too delicate, and led nowhere in particular.  Still, it was difficult not to take a certain amount of interest in a handsome woman who had made such a wreck of her life so young, who was so utterly alone, so proud and independent in her loneliness, and apparently quite fine-hearted and unspoilt.  But for Bob Evers and his mother, the interest that I took might have been a little different in kind; but even with my solicitude for them there mingled already no small consideration for the social solitary whom I watched now as she sat peering across the glacier, the foremost figure in a world of high lights and great backgrounds, and whom to watch was to admire, even against the greatest of them all.  Alas! mere admiration could not change my task or stay my hand; it could but clog me by destroying my singleness of purpose, and giving me a double heart to match my double face.

Since, however, a detestable duty had been undertaken, and since as a duty it was more apparent than I had dreamt of finding it, there was nothing for it but to go through with the thing and make immediate enemies of my friends.  So I set my teeth and talked of Bob.  I was glad Mrs. Lascelles liked him.  His father was a remote connection of mine, whom I had never met.  But I had once known his mother very well.

“And what is she like?” asked Mrs. Lascelles, calling her fine eyes home from infinity, and fixing them once more on me.

CHAPTER VI

OUT OF ACTION