But strange events, little dreamt of by either, were on their way to meet them; events which were to turn into disastrous twistings the paths that had run so easily side by side. CHAPTER III A SOCIETY SENSATION “Have you heard the latest sensation, Lady Rotherfield?” “Oh, no, Mr. Greetland. Do tell me. It’s not the scandal about Lord Barnoldby and Infanta Turnour? Of course every one knows all about that.” “Hardly all, dear lady,” Greetland simpered. He was one of the cohort of smart diners-out; the social bagmen who all travel in the same commodity, for which there is universal demand--scandal. “The Barnoldby-Turnour affair is never-ending. Nobody ever will hear the last of that.” “The Infanta is old enough to know better,” observed Mrs. Hargrave on the other side of him, scandalized but interested. “She is big enough at any rate,” Greetland smirked. “To be ashamed of herself,” supplemented Lady Rotherfield illogically. “Perhaps she has out-grown the sense of shame,” suggested Greetland, whose stature matched his ambition. “But that wasn’t what I was referring to. Something much more thrilling.” “Mr. Greetland!” The society purveyor glanced round to see whether he had an audience worthy of the news. People on each side seemed to be pricking up their ears. There was evidently something of interest going forward; the spasmodic tea-table talk languished; Dormer Greetland was always interesting; even men who itched to kick him admitted that. “A curiously marked caterpillar” had once been Gastineau’s correction when some one spoke of Greetland as a worm. He was too sleek and foppish to be a human exemplar of the more coarse and naked invertebrate. A pretty piece of scandal was evidently forthcoming, and he got an audience to his liking--almost every one of importance in the room, with one notable exception, the hostess, Countess Alexia von Rohnburg, who was listening to a prosy Russian diplomat. “What is it? You have some news for us, Greetland?” cried the high-pitched voice of Baron de Daun, as he came across the floor and stood over the group. In his way the Baron was as great a scandal-monger and _blagueur_ as the other man, but he tore reputations to shreds with greater violence than his English _confrère_, who was, after all, more of an artist. On the other hand, the Baron had greater justification in peeping through the chinks in society’s shutters, for was he not a diplomatist? “A very extraordinary thing has come to light,” Greetland said, with an air befitting the communication. “It is really quite dramatic, and Heaven only knows what will be the end of it.” “What? What?” Baron de Daun’s temper was impatient of preliminaries, a circumstance which, however, was not so great a drawback as it would seem in his profession, where due weight is given to considerations other than individual fitness.