She was now six-and-twenty, a widow, living in a small house in a narrow street like the neck of a bottle, between Park Lane and South Audley Street, with an income of two thousand a year, but popularly reputed to be spending at least five thousand. Her reputation in her first season had been unassailed, but she was rather taken upon trust, on the strength of the houses where she was met, than by reason of any exact knowledge that people had of her character and environment. Good-natured friends declared that she was thoroughbred. A creature with such exquisite hands and feet, and such a patrician turn of the swan-like throat, could hardly have come out of the gutter; and her husband had belonged to one of the oldest families in Wessex. So in that first season, except among her rivals in the beauty show, the general tone about her was approval. Then, in her second year as the lovely widow, things began to leak out, unpleasant things--as to the men she knew, and the money she spent, the hours she kept in that snug little house in Brown Street; the places at which she was seen in London and Paris, chiefly in Paris, where people pretended that she had a _pied-à-terre_ in the new quarter beyond St. Geneviève. People talked, but nothing was positively stated, except that she did curious things, and was beginning to be regarded somewhat shyly by prudish hostesses. She still went to a great many houses--smart houses and rich houses; but not quite the best houses, not the houses that can give a _cachet_, and stop the mouth of slander. She gave little luncheons, little dinners, little suppers, in the little street out of Park Lane, and her lamp-lit drawing-room used to shine across the street in the small hours, as a token that there were talk and laughter and cards and music in the gay little room for _tout le monde_, or at least for her particular _monde_. She had a fine contralto voice, and sang French and Spanish ballads delightfully, could breathe such fire and passion into a song that the merest doggerel seemed inspired. But before this second season was over there were a few people in London who had dreadful things to say about Mrs. Bellenden, and who said them with infinite cruelty; people for whose belongings--son or daughter, foolish youth or confiding young wife--this lovely widow had been a scourge.