II

AN apparition almost as startling had come to Garnett himself in the shape of the mauve note received from his concierge as he was leaving the hotel for luncheon.

Not that, on the face of it, a missive announcing Mrs. Sam Newell’s arrival at Ritz’s, and her need of his presence there that afternoon at five, carried any special mark of the portentous.  It was not her being at Ritz’s that surprised him.  The fact that she was chronically hard up, and had once or twice lately been so brutally confronted with the consequences as to accept—­indeed solicit—­a loan of five pounds from him:  this circumstance, as Garnett knew, would never be allowed to affect the general tenor of her existence.  If one came to Paris, where could one go but to Ritz’s?  Did he see her in some grubby hole across the river?  Or in a family pension near the Place de l’Etoile?  There was no affectation in her tendency to gravitate toward what was costliest and most conspicuous.  In doing so she obeyed one of the profoundest instincts of her nature, and it was another instinct which taught her to gratify the first at any cost, even to that of dipping into the pocket of an impecunious newspaper correspondent.  It was a part of her strength—­and of her charm too—­that she did such things naturally, openly, without any of the ugly grimaces of dissimulation or compunction.

Her recourse to Garnett had of course marked a specially low ebb in her fortunes.  Save in moments of exceptional dearth she had richer sources of supply; and he was nearly sure that, by running over the “society column” of the Paris Herald, he should find an explanation, not perhaps of her presence at Ritz’s, but of her means of subsistence there.  What really perplexed him was not the financial but the social aspect of the case.  When Mrs. Newell had left London in July she had told him that, between Cowes and Scotland, she and Hermy were provided for till the middle of October:  after that, as she put it, they would have to look about.  Why, then, when she had in her hand the opportunity of living for three months at the expense of the British aristocracy, did she rush off to Paris at heaven knew whose expense in the beginning of September?  She was not a woman to act incoherently; if she made mistakes they were not of that kind.  Garnett felt sure she would never willingly relax her hold on her distinguished friends—­was it possible that it was they who had somewhat violently let go of her?

As Garnett reviewed the situation he began to see that this possibility had for some time been latent in it.  He had felt that something might happen at any moment—­and was not this the something he had obscurely foreseen?  Mrs. Newell really moved too fast:  her position was as perilous as that of an invading army without a base of supplies.  She used up everything too quickly—­friends, credit, influence, forbearance.  It was so easy