He started.

“Where?”

“At Lady Winterbourne’s.  Aldous Raeburn was there.  Your beautiful Socialist was very interesting—­and rather surprising.  She talked of the advantages of wealth; said she had been converted—­by living among the poor—­had changed her mind, in fact, on many things.  We were all much edified—­including Mr. Raeburn.  How long do you suppose that business will remain ‘off’?  To my mind I never saw a young woman more eager to undo a mistake.”  Then she added slowly, “The accounts of Lord Maxwell get more and more unsatisfactory.”

Wharton stared at her with sparkling eyes.  “How little you know her!” he said, not without a tone of contempt.

“Oh! very well,” said Lady Selina, with the slightest shrug of her white shoulders.

He turned to the mantelpiece and began to play with some ornaments upon it.

“Tell me what she said,” he enquired presently.

Lady Selina gave her own account of the conversation.  Wharton recovered himself.

“Dear me!” he said, when she stopped.  “Yes—­well—­we may see another act.  Who knows?  Well, good-night, Lady Selina.”

She gave him her hand with her usual aristocrat’s passivity, and he went.  But it was late indeed that night before she ceased to speculate on what the real effect of her words had been upon him.

As for Wharton, on his walk home he thought of Marcella Boyce and of Raeburn with a certain fever of jealous vanity which was coming, he told himself, dangerously near to passion.  He did not believe Lady Selina, but nevertheless he felt that her news might drive him into rash steps he could ill afford, and had indeed been doing his best to avoid.  Meanwhile it was clear to him that the mistress of Alresford House had taken an envious dislike to Marcella.  How plain she had looked to-night in spite of her gorgeous dress! and how intolerable Lord Alresford grew!

CHAPTER XII.

But what right had Wharton to be thinking of such irrelevant matters as women and love-making at all?  He had spoken of public worries to Lady Selina.  In reality his public prospects in themselves were, if anything, improved.  It was his private affairs that were rushing fast on catastrophe, and threatening to drag the rest with them.

He had never been so hard pressed for money in his life.  In the first place his gambling debts had mounted up prodigiously of late.  His friends were tolerant and easy-going.  But the more tolerant they were the more he was bound to frequent them.  And his luck for some time had been monotonously bad.  Before long these debts must be paid, and some of them—­to a figure he shrank from dwelling upon—­were already urgent.