Billy was puzzled for a moment, thinking that some difficult mental problem had been offered for his digestion.

“Oh, I see,” he said, as he opened his own door with his latch-key.  “He only meant that she was telling a lie; I suspect he is right too.”

CHAPTER XXXI

THE NURSING OF A SLANDER

Meanwhile, in shadowy corners of Westmoreland House, Miss Carew lived a monotonous but anxious life.  For days together she hardly saw Molly, and then perhaps she would be called into the big bed-room for a long talk, or rather, to listen to a long monologue in which Molly gave vent to views and feelings on men and things.

Molly’s cynicism was increasing constantly, and she now hardly ever allowed that anybody did anything for a good motive.  She had moods in which she poured scandal into Miss Carew’s half excited and curious mind, piling on her account of the wickedness and the baseness of the people she knew intimately, of the sharks who pursued her money, and, most of all, she showered her scorn on the men who wanted to marry her.

Listening to her Miss Carew almost believed that all the men Molly met were divorces, or notoriously lived bad lives, and hardly veiled their intention to continue to do the same after obtaining her hand and her money.

Molly would lie on a sofa, in a gorgeous kind of deshabille which cost almost as much as Miss Carew spent on her clothes in the whole year, and apparently take delight in scaring her by these hideous revelations.  She was so strange in her wild kind of eloquence, and it was so impossible to believe all she said, that the doubt more than once occurred to Miss Carew whether it might be a case of the use of drugs.  The extraordinary personal indulgence of luxury was unlike anything the older woman had ever come across.  Then there was no system, nothing business-like about Molly as there often is in women of the modern world.  Miss Carew dimly suspected that any society of human beings expects some self-discipline, and some sacrifice to ordinary rules.  As it was she wondered how long Molly’s neglect of small duties and her frequent insolence would be condoned.

All this, which had been coming on gradually, was positively nauseous to the middle-aged Englishwoman whose nerves were suffering from the strain, and she came to feel that it would be impossible to endure it much longer.  It would be easier to drudge and trudge with girls in the schoolroom for a smaller salary than to endure life with Molly if she were to develop further this kind of temper.