“My dear—!” I was too amazed to expostulate.

“We’ve got a—­a pestilence among us,” she declared, her foot tapping the ground angrily, “and the least we can do is to go into quarantine.  Oh, I’m so sorry and so ashamed!  The poor bishop!  I’ll take good care that no one else shall meet that woman here.  You did your best for me, Uncle Paul, and managed admirably, but it was all no use.  I hoped against hope that what between the dusk of the drawing-room before dinner, and being put at opposite ends of the table, we might get through without a meeting—­”

“But, my dear, explain.  Why shouldn’t the bishop and Lady Carwitchet meet?  Why is it worse for him than anyone else?”

“Why?  I thought everybody had heard of that dreadful wife of his who nearly broke his heart.  If he married her for her money it served him right, but Lady Landor says she was very handsome and really in love with him at first.  Then Lady Carwitchet got hold of her and led her into all sorts of mischief.  She left her husband—­he was only a rector with a country living in those days—­and went to live in town, got into a horrid fast set, and made herself notorious.  You must have heard of her.”

“I heard of her sapphires, my dear.  But I was in Brazil at the time.”

“I wish you had been at home.  You might have found her out.  She was furious because her husband refused to let her wear the great Valdez sapphire.  It had been in the Montanaro family for some generations, and her father settled it first on her and then on her little girl—­the bishop being trustee.  He felt obliged to take away the little girl, and send her off to be brought up by some old aunts in the country, and he locked up the sapphire.  Lady Carwitchet tells as a splendid joke how they got the copy made in Paris, and it did just as well for the people to stare at.  No wonder the bishop hates the very name of the stone.”

“How long will she stay here?” I asked dismally.

“Till Lord Carwitchet can come and escort her to Paris to visit some American friends.  Goodness knows when that will be!  Do go up to town, Uncle Paul!”

I refused indignantly.  The very least I could do was to stand by my poor young relatives in their troubles and help them through.  I did so.  I wore that inferior cat’s eye for six weeks!

It is a time I cannot think of even now without a shudder.  The more I saw of that terrible old woman the more I detested her, and we saw a very great deal of her.  Leta kept her word, and neither accepted nor gave invitations all that time.  We were cut off from all society but that of old General Fairford, who would go anywhere and meet anyone to get a rubber after dinner; the doctor, a sporting widower; and the Duberlys, a giddy, rather rackety young, couple who had taken the Dower House for a year.  Lady Carwitchet seemed perfectly content.  She reveled in the soft living and good fare of the Manor House, the drives