Sellingworth's eyes in the lamplight and firelight, and, despite a
certain not forgotten moment connected with the Hyde Park Hotel, he
believed that it could. And Lady Sellingworth looked at him and knew
that it could not. About such a matter she had no illusions.

And yet for years she had lived a life cloudy with illusions. What had
led her out from those clouds? Braybrooke had hinted to Craven that
possibly Seymour Portman knew the secret of Lady Sellingworth's abrupt
desertion of the "old guard" and plunge into old age. But even he did
not know it. For he loved her in a still, determined, undeviating way.
And no woman would care to tell such a secret to a man who loved her and
who was almost certain, barring the explosion of a moral bombshell, and
perhaps even then, to go on loving her.

No one knew why Lady Sellingworth had abruptly and finally emerged from
the world of illusions in which she had lived. But possibly a member of
the underworld, a light-fingered gentleman of brazen assurance, had long
ago guessed the reason for her sudden departure from the regiment of
which she had been a conspicuous member; possibly he had guessed, or
surmised, why she had sent in her papers. But even he could scarcely be
certain.

The truth of the matter was this.




PART TWO