door, and headed the stately procession of matronly velvet and diamonds,
herself at once the most regal and the most graceful figure in that bevy
of fair woman.

In the drawing-room nobody could be gayer than Lady Maulevrier, as she
marked the time of Signor Paponizzi's saltarello, exquisitely performed
on the Signor's famed Amati violin--or talked of the latest
scandal--always excepting that latest scandal of all which involved her
own husband--in subdued murmurs with one of her intimates. In the
dining-room the men drew closer together over their wine, and tore Lord
Maulevrier's character to rags. Yea, they rent him with their teeth and
gnawed the flesh from his bones, until there was not so much left of him
as the dogs left of Jezebel.

He had been a scamp from his cradle, a spendthrift at Eton and Oxford, a
blackleg in his manhood. False to men, false to women. Clever? Yes,
undoubtedly, just as Satan is clever, and as unscrupulous as that very
Satan. This was what his friends said of him over their wine. And now he
was rumoured to have sold the British forces in the Carnatic provinces
to one of the native Princes. Yes, to have taken gold, gold to an amount
which Clive in his most rapacious moments never dreamt of, for his
countrymen's blood. Tidings of dark transactions between the Governor
and the native Princes had reached the ears of the Government, tidings
so vague, so incredible, that the Government might naturally be slow to
believe, still slower to act. There were whispers of a woman's
influence, a beautiful Ranee, a creature as fascinating and as
unscrupulous as Cleopatra. The scandal had been growing for months past,
but it was only in the letters received to-day that the rumour had taken
a tangible shape, and now it was currently reported that Lord Maulevrier
had been recalled, and would have to answer at the bar of the House of