Soon she found herself abandoned, in spite of a full banking account.  People had dropped her, right and left.

The years went by.

Calmly, without misgivings and without fervour, she took to the bottle.

Something drew her to Nepenthe—­dim Mediterranean memories.  Arrived there, she used to engulf three pints of Martell and Hennessey, one after the other, and then “wash them out”—­such was her phraseology—­with a magnum of Perrier Jouet; a proceeding which, while it heightened her complexion and gave a sparkle to her poor flustered eye, was not conducive to the preservation of equilibrium in the lower limbs.  There resulted those periodical “nervous breakdowns” which necessitated seclusion and sometimes medical treatment.  The collapses had become distressingly frequent with the last year or two.  One of her many drawbacks was that she courted publicity in her cups.  She was perfectly reckless as to what she then said, and had been known to bring a blush to the seasoned cheek of Don Francesco himself who, unaware of her condition at one particular moment, politely ventured to enquire why she always wore black and was told that she was in mourning, as everybody ought to mourn, for his lost innocence.  Being an Englishwoman, she was a thorn in the side of her moral compatriot the Commissioner.

Her noctambulous habits often brought her into contact with the local police and sometimes with His Worship Signor Malipizzo.  Greatly to the surprise of Mr. Parker, the magistrate was observed to take a lenient view of the case.  None the less, she had passed several nights in the local gaol.  Staggering about the lanes of Nepenthe in the silent hours before dawn, she was liable to be driven, at the bidding of some dark primeval impulse, to divest herself of her raiment—­a singularity which perturbed even the hardiest of social night-birds who had the misfortune to encounter her.  Taxed with this freakish behaviour, she would refer to the example of St. Francis of Assisi who did the same, and brazenly ask whether he wasn’t good enough for them?  Whether she couldn’t give her last shirt to a beggar, as well as anybody else?  In short, there was nothing to be done with her.

The dear lady, as Keith often called her, was becoming a real problem.

And now her eye, roving round the room, fixed itself with the drunkard’s divine unerring instinct upon Denis.  What a nice, modest, gentlemanly-looking boy!  Just what she wanted.

“This sirocco!” she sighed, groping dramatically for a chair.  “It makes me feel so funny.  Oh, dear!  I shall go off in a faint.  Ah, do be a kind young man and fetch me some brandy and soda.  A large tumbler.  Ah, do!  And very little soda, please—­on account of my heart.  Only the smallest drop!”