So whilst Etta Stackpole talked he had been wondering, not only how Lady Hudson got on with her footman, but how Sir William liked it. Sir William Hudson was the Managing Director of the Great Southern Railway Company. As far as Dudley Leicester knew, he passed his time in travelling from one end of the world to the other, whilst Etta carried on her cutting-out expeditions from a very snug harbour in Curzon Street, or from the very noble property known as Well-lands in Surrey. But, indeed, although the Leicesters and the Hudsons lived in the same street, their points of contact were almost non-existent, and since their rupture Dudley Leicester and Etta Stackpole had never met. His mother, indeed, who had managed his estate a little too economically till her death three years ago, had let Hangham, the Leicesters’ place, which was just next door to Cove Park, and Etta, perhaps because she thought it was full time, or perhaps because she had stipulated for some agreeable arrangement with Sir William, had almost immediately “made a match” with the director of railways. And although it would be hard to say what was Dudley Leicester’s “line,” we may put it down in his own words that railway directors were not in it. But vaguely and without much interest, at odd moments Dudley Leicester had gathered--it is impossible to know how one does gather these things, or perhaps Robert Grimshaw had really formulated the idea for his simple brain--that the Hudsons were one of several predatory and semi-detached couples. They didn’t interfere apparently with each other. They hit where they liked, like what used to be called “chain shot,” dangerous missiles consisting of two cannon-balls chained one to the other and whirling through Society. Robert Grimshaw had certainly gained this impression from his two friends, the Senhora de Bogota and Madame de Mauvesine, the wives of two of the diplomatic body in London, two ladies who, though they were upon the most intimate of terms with Etta Hudson, were yet in a perpetual state of shocked and admiring envy. It was as if, witnessing Etta’s freedom, these ladies of Latin origin and comparatively circumscribed liberties, rubbed their eyes and imagined that they had been allowed to witness scenes from a fairyland--from a veritable Island of the Blessed. They couldn’t imagine how it was possible to be married and yet to be so absolutely free. They couldn’t, indeed, imagine how it was possible to be so absolutely free in any state, whether married, single, or any of the intermediary stages. And, indeed, Senhora de Bogota, at that moment opposite them at the table, was leaning across the little blonde man who was always known as Mr. “Phyllis” Trevor, for much the same reason that Dudley Leicester came afterwards to be known as Mr. “Pauline” Leicester--Senhora de Bogota was leaning, a splendid mass of dark and opulent flesh, across her diminutive neighbour’s form to whisper with a strong Brazilian accent