"Who have loved and ceased to love, forget That ever they lived in their lives, they say-- Only remember the fever and fret, And the pain of love that was all his pay." Mrs. Craigie put on mourning as though her child was dead, and sent out to her friends the customary notifications. The good old Deputy-Adjutant-General alone thought kindly of Lola. VI LONDON IN THE 'FORTIES To a woman in Lola's situation, London in the early 'forties offered every inducement to go to the devil. Between a roaring maelstrom of the coarsest libertinism, on the one hand, and an impregnable barrier of heartless puritanism on the other, her destruction was well-nigh inevitable. The hotchpotch of unorganised humanity that we call Society seldom presented an uglier appearance than it did in the first decade of Victoria's reign. Sir Mulberry Hawk and Pecksniff are types of the two contending forces. Blackguardism was matched against snivelling cant. Luckily, the victory fell to neither. Those were the days of Crockfords, of Vauxhall, of the spunging-house, of public executions turned into popular festivals; when gentlemen of fashion painted policemen pea-green, and beat them till they were senseless; when peers got drunk and the people starved. Opposed to this debauchery was a religion of convention and propriety, narrow, stupid, and un-Christlike--the cult of the correct and the respectable, the fetishes to which Lady Flora Hastings and many another woman were coldly sacrificed. In spite of Sir Mulberry and Mr. Pecksniff, however, Lola, ex-Mrs. James, had no intention of going under. Her exclusion from society, after her wearisome experiences in India, she probably regarded as no great hardship. Her youth, her sprightliness, and her beauty made her many friends. Some of these as quickly became enemies, when they discovered that a divorced woman is not necessarily for sale. More than one _roue_ vowed vengeance against the girl who, with bursts of laughter and dangerous gusts of anger, rejected the offer of his protection. It was, perhaps, in this way she offended the elegant Lord Ranelagh, who was then swaggering about in the Spanish cloak he had worn in the Carlist Wars. Lola was strong enough to swim in the maelstrom. Independence and adversity brought out the latent force in the character of the "good little thing" of Simla. Instead of looking out for a refuge, she sought a career.