“Lady Francis made one of the biggest sensations I can remember, when she began to get into the swing of London society. She had been presented on her marriage, of course. But then Frank had carried her off to the cottage in Surrey, and the world had seen no more of her, so that now she appeared as a novelty. And she is--well, you know what she is to look at. I know dozens of women handsomer by line and rule. But there’s something fetching about Fenella that I never saw equaled. And then the old game began again. Fellows were mad about her, and she flirted in the wildest way.” “The Romeo-and-Juliet passion having meanwhile died a natural death?” said Jacynth, staring straight before him. “Oh, I suppose so. The fact is, she is a butterfly kind of creature that no man ought ever to have taken seriously.” “And the husband----” “Frank was--well, the fact is, Frank acted like a fool. He was very young, too, you know. They were like a couple of children together, and used to squabble, and kiss, and make it up like children. Frank never had the least suspicion of jealousy about her, though. Never--until----” “Exactly!” exclaimed Jacynth, with a nod of the head. “Well, whether his aunt, old Lady Grizel, put it into his head, or whether he saw something for himself that he didn’t like--the fact is, Frank made a scene one night when they came home from a ball at the Austrian Embassy, and Fenella--who is the Tartar’s own daughter when she’s roused, I can tell you, dynamite isn’t in it!--flared up tremendously, and there was, in short, the devil to pay. Fenella, it seems, had been secretly bottling up a little private jealousy on her own part. There was a certain Madame--her name don’t matter; and she has returned to Mongolia or wherever she came from long ago--a certain woman, pretty nearly old enough to be Frank’s mother, but a fascinating sort of Jezebel, whom you met about everywhere that season. And Fenella turned round and declared that Frank had been making her miserable by his goings-on with that vile woman!” “All her foolish fancy, of course!” said Jacynth, suddenly looking at the other man with a penetrating gaze from beneath his frowning black brows. “Oh--well--you know--oh, I daresay Frank had, to some extent, been making an ass of himself. But, of course, the case was totally different.” “Oh, of course.”