With a comical little twist of the mouth, she went on: “Some are born virtuous, some are--something or other--what is it?--and some have virtue thrust upon them! I know that I must defend this wretched case for the sake of other people, but I can’t help thinking that if Mortimer did win it and get his divorce, it would be the very thing for me!” “I confess I don’t understand---- ” “Mr. Rivers would marry me,” she said, wistfully, “and then I should live in London!” Egidia laughed--she could not help it! This, then, was the net result of her carefully arranged plan for indoctrinating her guest with the pleasures of respectability and the advantages of a defined social position. “My dear woman, forgive me!” she exclaimed. “Have you the very remotest notion of what you are saying? You cannot have the most elementary knowledge of social laws if you imagine that a man having married a divorced woman--divorced on his account--could take her out, and expect his friends to call on her! On the contrary, you and he--God help you both--would have to forego all society. You would have to live abroad in some shady place, and be thankful for the company of blacklegs and second-rate women, or else make up your minds to live entirely apart from the world. He would not mind that; he is used to it; but you! What would you do without life, movement, and, above all, consideration? That is what I was asking myself when I looked down the table to-night, and saw you happy and gay---- ” Mrs. Elles demurred. “Well, pretending to be happy and gay--though I really and truly believe you were. As you have just been saying yourself, you were in your element. And I thought what a volcano it was that you were standing on, and how, if the worst came to pass, how different a life yours would be from this you covet--and all the time you were thinking that the very fact of your divorce would entitle you to it all! Good Heavens! Instead of sitting there, gay and important, admired and attended to, with people taking the trouble to mesmerize you and analyze you and take your soul to pieces for you, you would be hidden away in some little foreign town--Boulogne, say?--cut, snubbed, and penned up for life with no other society but that of the man you have dragged down along with you, and involved in your ruin, and who would end by hating you in consequence.” Mrs. Elles cried out, outraged. “You forget--you forget that he proposed to me--when he thought I was free!” “I beg your pardon---- ” Egidia said, vaguely. “No, don’t beg my pardon, you meant to be kind--but---- ” She stopped, and her whole manner altered as the humiliating suggestion took root in her mind. “Tell me--you must mean--tell me in so many words--you must mean to say that he never really cared for me? For God’s sake, speak out!”