“Now we are talking about something I know more about than you, Mr. Constantine,” cried Miss Le Pettit archly, “and I, for one, do not believe that the present style of dress can ever go completely out; it is too becoming.  We shall have novelties, of course, but the idea will remain the same.  And, talking of novelties, if you don’t scorn such things, I will tell you a great secret.  I am the first person to procure one of the new jackets—­like the Princess of Wales wears, you know.  You must have heard about them.  Alexandra jackets they’re called.  Isn’t that pretty?  And they’re just as pretty as she is.  The sleeve....”

And thus the great description flowed on, with a bevy of entranced girls, who had caught the raised tone, fluttering round in excitement like a crowd of butterflies round a blossom of extra sweetness.

From which it will be seen that a month had already passed since Loveday had been the excitement of society, and that this conversation between the eccentric Mr. Constantine and the charming Miss Le Pettit was almost the last flickering of interest in her fate.  The life of one moon had been enough to see the waxing and waning of what Mr. Constantine had surprisingly called her passion.

Yet Miss Le Pettit, eager, nay, even anxious, as she had been to lead the gentleman away from the topic, reverted to it as though by a curious fascination, when he had taken his leave.  To tell the truth, her conscience had some slight cause to make her uneasy on this very subject of the violent Loveday.  The thing was ridiculous, of course ... she, Miss Le Pettit, could not conceivably have been even remotely to blame for such a fantastical happening, and yet that slight pricking remained....

“An odd word to have used,” she commented, in recounting the conversation she had had with Mr. Constantine to her eager friends, “a very odd word, indeed, for by it, apparently, he did not mean an access of anger such as the word signifies in all the books I have read....”

“You mean in the books that you are supposed to have read, Flora,” interrupted one of the young ladies, a flighty girl, whose tongue often outran her discretion.  “I have come across it meaning something quite different in books like—­well, you know the sort of books I mean.”

“I do not think, though, that even that was how Mr. Constantine used the word,” replied Flora, with more of discernment than she commonly showed, “though I will not pretend to you, Ellen, that I do not recognise the sense in which you refer to it.  To be candid, I don’t think I know what he did mean, but he seemed to me to be paying a vast deal of attention to the matter, which surprised me in a person of his standing.”

“I have heard he is a man of much sensibility, though he is so satirical,” murmured the romantic Emilia, bending over her netting so that her ebon curls shaded her suddenly flushing cheek.

“Perhaps he knows more about the fair Loveday than we have guessed,” cried the careless Ellen; “perhaps he knows too much, and cannot keep away from the subject for his guilty conscience, as they say murderers are drawn back to the spot where they have buried the body of their victim!”