“How angry Edward would have been,” she said to herself.  “I wonder whether he would have advised me to write a little note to Captain Pratt, explaining how I came there, and asking him not to mention it.  But, of course, he won’t repeat it.  He won’t want to make an enemy of me and Hugh.  The Pratts think so much of me.  And when I marry Hugh”—­(knock at the mental door)—­“if ever I marry Hugh, we will be civil to him and have him to stay.  Edward never would, but I don’t think so much of good family, and all that, as Edward did.  We will certainly ask him.”

It was not till after luncheon that Lady Newhaven, after scanning the Ladies’ Pictorial, languidly opened the Morning Post.

Suddenly the paper fell from her hands on to the floor.  She seized it up and read again the paragraph which had caught her eye.

“No!  No!” she gasped.  “It is not true.  It is not possible.”  And she read it a third time.

The paper fell from her nerveless hands again, and this time it remained on the floor.

It is doubtful whether until this moment Lady Newhaven had known what suffering was.  She had talked freely of it to others.  She had sung, as if it were her own composition, “Cleansing Fires.”  She often said it might have been written for her.

In the cruel fire of sorrow,
[slow, soft pedal. 
Cast thy heart, do not faint or wail,
[both pedals down, quicker. 
Let thy hand be firm and steady,
[loud, and hold on to last syllable. 
Do not let thy spi-rit quail,
[bang!  B natural.  With resolution. 
Bu-ut. . . .
[hurricane of false notes, etc., etc.

But now, poor thing, the fire had reached her, and her spirit quailed immediately.  Perhaps it was only natural that as her courage failed something else should take its place; an implacable burning resentment against her two betrayers, her lover and her friend.  She rocked herself to and fro.  Lover and friend.  “Oh, never, never trust in man’s love or woman’s friendship henceforth forever!” So learned Lady Newhaven the lesson of suffering.

“Lover and friend hast Thou put far from me,” she sobbed, “and mine acquaintance out of my sight.”

A ring at the door-bell proved that the latter part of the text, at any rate, was not true in her case.

A footman entered.

“Not at home.  Not at home,” she said, impatiently.

“I said not at home, but the gentleman said I was to take up his card,” said the man, presenting a card.

When Captain Pratt tipped, he tipped heavily.

Lady Newhaven read it.

“No.  Yes.  I will see him,” she said.  It flashed across her mind that she must be civil to him, and that her eyes were not red.  She had not shed tears.

The man picked the newspaper from the floor, put it on a side table, and withdrew.

Captain Pratt came in, bland, deferential, orchid in button-hole.