Both the ladies answered the question together. Lady Myrie described Mrs. Norman, in one dreadful word, as "Classical." By comparison with this, Mrs. Romsey's reply was intelligible. "Not even illness can spoil her beauty!"
"Including the headache she has got to-night?" Mr. Romsey suggested.
"Don't be ill-natured, dear! Mrs. Norman is here by the advice of one of the first physicians in London; she has suffered under serious troubles, poor thing."
Mr. Romsey persisted in being ill-natured. "Connected with her husband?" he asked.
Lady Myrie entered a protest. She was a widow; and it was notorious among her friends that the death of her husband had been the happiest event in her married life. But she understood her duty to herself as a respectable woman.
"I think, Mr. Romsey, you might have spared that cruel allusion," she said with dignity.
Mr. Romsey apologized. He had his reasons for wishing to know something more about Mrs. Norman; he proposed to withdraw his last remark, and to put his inquiries under another form. Might he ask his wife if anybody had seen _Mr._ Norman?
"No."
"Or heard of him?"
Mrs. Romsey answered in the negative once more, and added a question on her own account. What did all this mean?
"It means," Lady Myrie interposed, "what we poor women are all exposed to--scandal." She had not yet forgiven Mr. Romsey's allusion, and she looked at him pointedly as she spoke. There are some impenetrable men on whom looks produce no impression. Mr. Romsey was one of them. He turned to his wife, and said, quietly:
"What I mean is, that I know more of Mrs. Norman than you do. I have heard of her--never mind how or where. She is a lady who has been celebrated in the newspapers. Don't be alarmed. She is no less a person than the divorced Mrs. Linley."
The two ladies looked at each other in blank dismay. Restrained by a sense of conjugal duty, Mrs. Romsey only indulged in an exclamation. Lady Myrie, independent of restraint, expressed her opinion, and said: "Quite impossible!"
"The Mrs. Norman whom I mean," Mr. Romsey went on, "has, as I have been told, a mother living. The old lady has been twice married. Her name is Mrs. Presty."
This settled the question. Mrs. Presty was established, in her own proper person, with her daughter and grandchild at the hotel.
Lady Myrie yielded to the force of evidence; she lifted her hands in horror: "This is too dreadful!"
Mrs. Romsey took a more compassionate view of the disclosure.
"Surely the poor lady is to be pitied?" she gently suggested.
Lady Myrie looked at her friend in astonishment. "My dear, you must have forgotten what the judge said about her. Surely you read the report of the case in the newspapers?"
"No; I heard of the trial. and that's all. What did the judge say?"
"Say?" Lady Myrie repeated. "What did he not say! His lordship declared that he had a great mind not to grant the Divorce at all. He spoke of this dreadful woman who has deceived us in the severest terms; he said she had behaved in a most improper manner. She had encouraged the abominable governess; and if her husband had yielded to temptation, it was her fault. And more besides, that I don't remember."
Mr. Romsey's wife appealed to him in despair. "What am I to do?" she asked, helplessly.
"Do nothing," was the wise reply. "Didn't you say she was going away to-morrow?"
"That's the worst of it!" Mrs. Romsey declared. "Her little girl Kitty gives a farewell dinner to-morrow to our children; and I've promised to take them to say good-by."
Lady Myrie pronounced sentence without hesitation. "Of course your girls mustn't go. Daughters! Think of their reputations when they grow up!"
"Are you in the same scrape with my wife?" Mr. Romsey asked.
Lady Myrie corrected his language. "I have been deceived in the same way," she said. "Though my children are boys (which perhaps makes a difference) I feel it is my duty as a mother not to let them get into bad company. I do nothing myself in an underhand way. No excuses! I shall send a note and tell Mrs. Norman why she doesn't see my boys to-morrow."
"Isn't that a little hard on her?" said merciful Mrs. Romsey.
Mr. Romsey agreed with his wife, on grounds of expediency. "Never make a row if you can help it," was the peaceable principle to which this gentleman committed himself. "Send word that the children have caught colds, and get over it in that way."
Mrs. Romsey looked gratefully at her admirable husband. "Just the thing!" she said, with an air of relief.
Lady Myrie's sense of duty expressed itself, with the strictest adherence to the laws of courtesy. She rose, smiled resignedly, and said, "Good-night."
Almost at the same moment, innocent little Kitty astonished her mother and her grandmother by appearing before them in her night-gown, after she had been put to bed nearly two hours since.
"What will this child do next?" Mrs. Presty exclaimed.
Kitty told the truth. "I can't go to sleep, grandmamma.
"Why not, my darling?" her mother asked.
"I'm so excited, mamma."
"About what, Kitty?"
"About my dinner-party to-morrow. Oh," said the child, clasping her hands earnestly as s he thought of her playfellows, "I do so hope it will go off well!"