repeated in her. She was a spendthrift, as they had been spendthrifts.
She loved money because she loved spending, not hoarding it. And for
years she scattered it with both hands.

Then, as she approached forty, the freshness of her beauty began to
fade. She had been too well known, and had to endure the fate of those
who have long been talked about. Men said of her, "Mrs. Chepstow--oh,
she's been going a deuce of a time. She must be well over fifty."
Women--good women especially--pronounced her nearer sixty. Almost
suddenly, as often happens in such cases as hers, the roseate hue faded
from her life and a greyness began to fall over it.

She was seen about with very young men, almost boys. People sneered when
they spoke of her. It was said that she was not so well off as she had
been. Some shoddy millionaire had put her into a speculation. It had
gone wrong, and he had not thought it necessary to pay up her losses.
She moved from her house in Park Lane to a flat in Victoria Street, then
to a little house in Kensington. Then she gave that up, and took a small
place in the country, and motored up and down, to and from town. Then
she got sick of that, and went to live in a London hotel. She sold her
yacht. She sold a quantity of diamonds.

And people continued to say, "Mrs. Chepstow--oh, she must be well over
fifty."

Undoubtedly she was face to face with a very bad period. With every
month that passed, loneliness stared at her more fixedly, looked at her
in the eyes till she began to feel almost dazed, almost hypnotized. A
dulness crept over her.