It was the very devil!  For, if Miltoun had already made up his mind to marry her, without knowledge of the malicious rumour, what would not be his determination now?  And the woman of the world rose up in Lady Valleys.  This marriage must not come off.  It was contrary to almost every instinct of one who was practical not only by character, but by habit of life and training.  Her warm and full-blooded nature had a sneaking sympathy with love and pleasure, and had she not been practical, she might have found this side of her a serious drawback to the main tenor of a life so much in view of the public eye.  Her consciousness of this danger in her own case made her extremely alive to the risks of an undesirable connection—­especially if it were a marriage—­to any public man.  At the same time the mother-heart in her was stirred.  Eustace had never been so deep in her affection as Bertie, still he was her first-born; and in face of news which meant that he was lost to her—­for this must indeed be ‘the marriage of two minds’ (or whatever that quotation was)—­she felt strangely jealous of a woman, who had won her son’s love, when she herself had never won it.  The aching of this jealousy gave her face for a moment almost a spiritual expression, then passed away into impatience.  Why should he marry her?  Things could be arranged.  People spoke of it already as an illicit relationship; well then, let people have what they had invented.  If the worst came to the worst, this was not the only constituency in England; and a dissolution could not be far off.  Better anything than a marriage which would handicap him all his life!  But would it be so great a handicap?  After all, beauty counted for much!  If only her story were not too conspicuous!  But what was her story?  Not to know it was absurd!  That was the worst of people who were not in Society, it was so difficult to find out!  And there rose in her that almost brutal resentment, which ferments very rapidly in those who from their youth up have been hedged round with the belief that they and they alone are the whole of the world.  In this mood Lady Valleys passed the letter to her daughters.  They read, and in turn handed it to Bertie, who in silence returned it to his mother.

But that evening, in the billiard-room, having manoeuvred to get him to herself, Barbara said to Courtier: 

“I wonder if you will answer me a question, Mr. Courtier?”

“If I may, and can.”

Her low-cut dress was of yew-green, with, little threads of flame-colour, matching her hair, so that there was about her a splendour of darkness and whiteness and gold, almost dazzling; and she stood very still, leaning back against the lighter green of the billiard-table, grasping its edge so tightly that the smooth strong backs of her hands quivered.

“We have just heard that Miltoun is going to ask Mrs. Noel to marry him.  People are never mysterious, are they, without good reason?  I wanted you to tell me—­who is she?”