The wine was reviving.  Doris found her voice.  As the door closed on Miss Field, she bent forward:—­

“Lady Dunstable, I didn’t come here on my own account, and had there been time of course I should have given you notice.  I came entirely on your account, because something was happening to you—­and Lord Dunstable—­which you didn’t know, and which made me—­very sorry for you!”

Lady Dunstable started slightly.

“Happening to me?—­and Lord Dunstable?”

“I have been seeing your son, Lady Dunstable.”

An instant change passed over the countenance of that lady.  It darkened, and the eyes became cold and wary.

“Indeed?  I didn’t know you were acquainted with him.”

“I never saw him till a few days ago.  Then I saw him—­in my uncle’s studio—­with a woman—­a woman to whom he is engaged.”

Lady Dunstable started again.

“I think you must be mistaken,” she said quickly, with a slight but haughty straightening of her shoulders.

Doris shook her head.

“No, I am not mistaken.  I will tell you—­if you don’t mind—­exactly what I have heard and seen.”

And with a puckered brow and visible effort she entered on the story of the happenings of which she had been a witness in Bentley’s studio.  She was perfectly conscious—­for a time—­that she was telling it against a dead weight of half scornful, half angry incredulity on Lady Dunstable’s part.  Rachel Dunstable listened, indeed, attentively.  But it was clear that she resented the story, which she did not believe; resented the telling of it, on her own ground, by this young woman whom she disliked; and resented above all the compulsory discussion which it involved, of her most intimate affairs, with a stranger and her social inferior.  All sorts of suspicions, indeed, ran through her mind as to the motives that could have prompted Mrs. Meadows to hurry up to Scotland, without taking even the decently polite trouble to announce herself, bringing this unlikely and trumped-up tale.  Most probably, a mean jealousy of her husband, and his greater social success!—­a determination to force herself on people who had not paid the same attention to herself as to him, to make them pay attention, willy-nilly.  Of course Herbert had undesirable acquaintances, and was content to go about with people entirely beneath him, in birth and education.  Everybody knew it, alack!  But he was really not such a fool—­such a heartless fool—­as this story implied!  Mrs. Meadows had been taken in—­willingly taken in—­had exaggerated everything she said for her own purposes.  The mother’s wrath indeed was rapidly rising to the smiting point, when a change in the narrative arrested her.