I forget whether any one was with us at the time, but this story spread... At least, it wasn't a _story_; several people, knowing nothing of the facts, had chosen to assume that a certain woman was a widow; one man, equally knowing nothing, said that he did not know whether she was a widow or not. Goodness me! Did it matter two pins one way or the other, so far as we were concerned? I should have been sorry to find out afterwards that there had been any kind of scandal, because one had thrown one's mantle over the woman and given an implied guarantee, as it were. That was why I _did_ attempt to learn a little something from my diplomatic friends... But it is hardly too much to say that a panic ensued among the "Bunnies" and "Theos". "They tell me," said Mr. "Bat" Shenstone, "that Mrs. Sawyer's husband is still living." "Oh?," I said. That phrase--"They tell me"--! It always puts me on my guard. I nearly told _him_ that, if he was only a _friend_ to her, it did not matter whether she had a husband or not... I noticed that she was "Mrs. Sawyer" now... The stories that I met for the next few days were so fantastic that I really think some one must have been deliberately making them up. At one moment the husband was in a home for inebriates, at another he was alive and well with a formidable revolver ready for any one who became too "friendly" with his wife; at another he was supposed to be in prison for actually shooting a man; then she was said to have divorced him, then he was said to have divorced her. Finally I was assured that she had never had a husband and was an adventuress who had come to exploit London. The money, I was told, was a decoy, and in reality there was no money; she had been left a few thousands by some man with whom she had been living; and she was pouring it out right and left in the hope of ensnaring some one else before it was all spent. I really did not know what I should be required to believe next. "We must clear this up," said Will one night when we were all down at the Hall. "Which story in particular?," I asked. "All of them," he answered very decisively; and at once. I'm not thinking of _us_, but we can't afford to let Consuelo have these lies circulating about her. Why don't you talk to her and find out the truth?" I am not ashamed to confess that I rather shrank from the prospect. Mrs. Sawyer had always been so singularly uncommunicative that it seemed impertinence to peer behind the veil. And the more so when she was one's guest. I don't think I could have screwed up courage, if Will's forethought had not shewn me the way; but I _did_ tell her as gently and sweetly as I could that there was always a certain idle curiosity about foreigners who came to live in England and that, in her case, the curiosity was increased by her beauty and immediate success. I coaxed her to tell me a little about her life... "What do you want to know?," she asked.