Lady Modyford waited a good deal longer than is usual with a first call, and got very friendly indeed with poor Marian before the end of her visit; for coarse-grained woman of the world as she was, her heart warmed not a little towards the friendless young bride who had come out to Trinidad—dull hole, Trinidad, not at all like Singapore, or Mauritius, or Cape Town—to find herself so utterly deserted by all society. And next day, all female Trinidad was talking, over five-o’-clock tea, about the remarkable fact, learnt indirectly through those unrecognised purveyors of fashionable intelligence, the servants, that that horrid proud Lady Modyford—‘who treats you and me, my dear, as if we were the dirt beneath her feet, don’t you know, and must call with two footmen and so much grandeur and formality’—had actually kissed that brown man’s wife, that’s to be the new District judge in Westmoreland, on both cheeks, the very first moment she saw her. Female Trinidad was so inexpressibly shocked at this disgraceful behaviour in a person officially charged with the maintenance of a high standard of decorum, that it was really half inclined to think it ought to cut Lady Modyford direct on next meeting her. It was restrained from this extreme measure, however, by a wholesome consideration of the fact that Lady Modyford would undoubtedly take the rebuff with unruffled amusement; so it contented itself by merely showing a little coldness to the governor’s wife when it happened to meet her, and refusing to enter into conversation with her on the subject of Marian and Edward Hawthorn.