was a confirmed anarchist, who cared no more for law and order, Church and State or the fundamentals of _life_, _tradition_, _honor_, womanhood than an animal, a beautiful orang-outang, if there is such a thing, who or which delighted in hanging to branches by its tail and making weird grimaces at passers-by. The thing had been a tragedy, so far as Fallaray was concerned, an uncanny and terrible event in his life, almost in the nature of an incurable illness. The so-called honeymoon to which he never looked back, had been a nightmare filled with scoffing laughter, brilliant and amazing remarks, out of which he had emerged in a state of mental chaos to plunge into work as an antidote. They had always lived under the same roof because it was necessary for a man who goes into politics to truckle to that curious form of hypocrisy which will never be eradicated from the British system. Her people and his people had demanded this, and his first constituency had made it a _sine qua non_. Not requiring much money, he had been and continued to be very generous in his allowance to his wife, who did not possess a cent of her own. On the contrary, it was frequently necessary for her to settle her brother’s debts and even to pay her father’s bills from time to time. The gallant old Marquis was without anything so bourgeois as the money sense and couldn’t possibly play bridge under five pounds a thousand. There was also the system with which he had many times attempted to break the bank at Monte Carlo. To-day, never interfering with her way of life and living in his own wing like a bachelor, he knew less of Feo’s character than he did when she had caught him first. What he knew of her friendships and her peregrinations he got from the newspapers. When it was necessary to dine at his own table, he treated her as though she were one of his guests, or rather as though he were one of hers. There was no scandal attaching to his name, because women played absolutely no part in his life; and there was no actual scandal attaching to hers. Only notoriety. She had come to be looked upon by society and by the vast middle class who discussed society as a beautiful freak, an audacious strange creature who frittered away her gifts, who was the leader of a set of women of all ages, married and unmarried, who took an impish delight in flouting the conventions and believed that they established the proof of unusual intelligence by a self-conscious display of eccentricity. VIII And in the meantime Lola continued to be an apt little pupil. Her quick ear had already enabled her to pick up the round crisp intonation of Lady Feo and her friends and at any moment of the day she could now give an exact imitation of their walk, manner of shaking hands and those characteristic tricks which made them different from all the women who had had the ill fortune to come into the world in the small streets.