Mrs. Summers glanced at her, as she sat with the little mocking smile still on her lips. “O Cis, dear,” she murmured, deprecatingly. Cecily got up. “I must go,” she said; “I’m wearing you out.” Mrs. Summers also rose. With a sudden movement she drew her friend into her arms. For a moment Cecily resisted. Then to the elder woman’s relief she broke into a passion of tears. “I’ve been so wretched, Rose,” she whispered, incoherently. “He was everything to me. All the world! And now he goes to another woman, and tells her all the things that he used--and says all the words that----Oh, what’s the good of talking!” she wailed. “It’s all over and done with. He doesn’t care any more. And I suppose he can’t help it. Sometimes I think I don’t care either. And then, all at once----” It was the old wail, the woman’s plaint, eternal as the hills, ever recurring as the wind and the rains recur; as monotonous as they. CHAPTER V It was Lady Wilmot’s at-home day, but so early in the afternoon that she could still indulge in the _tête-à-tête_ gossip with the friend who had lunched with her, a branch of her life’s occupation in which she excelled. She was a woman who supported well her fifty-five years. A little portly, her gray crinkled hair arranged _à la Marquise_, her ample skirts further suggesting the era of powder and patches, her bright eyes full of rather malicious humor, Lady Wilmot was a somewhat striking figure. That she was more feared than loved probably flattered the vanity which was not the least of her characteristics. The circumstance certainly did not affect her. Possessed of an income sufficiently large to make the exercise of life’s amenities a matter of inclination rather than of necessity, her inclination was naturally capricious, and she not infrequently smiled to hear herself described with a nervous laugh as “so delightfully uncommon.” “Uncommon rude, my dear,” had been her reply in one instance, “as you would have discovered if I had happened to be Mrs. Brown, Mrs. Smith, or Mrs. Robinson.” As it was, Lady Wilmot’s parties were attended by as heterogeneous a throng as any private house in London. In search of possible amusement, she cast her net wide, and, in company with men and women of her own sort, drew into the Onslow Square drawing-room, journalists who wrote fashion articles, novelists who went into many editions, painters whose imposing canvases appeared every year on the sacred walls of the Academy, as well as those who worked in Chelsea garrets. Then there were the faddists. “I have the best collection in London,” Lady Wilmot was wont to boast. “I have several excellent antique Vegetarians, a very good color, considering; a complete set of Mystics, only slightly cracked; any number of women athletes in a fairly good state of preservation, as well as one or two interesting oddments.”