And so the months passed, and Cara tasted intoxicating delights of which she had merely dreamt. Among her father’s associates, Miss Blagdon enjoyed _un grand succès_. Here was no shrinking, awkward hostess, but one whose dancing, skating, riding, and repartee found many admirers,--whilst her influence over an adoring parent was paraded with noisy ostentation. As for her mother--she stored her comfortably away in the remotest garret of her mind. They had met once; it happened in a block in Piccadilly. Cara, queening it in a huge open motor, with furs and rug of sable; her mother and Mrs. Hesketh in a station omnibus, with luggage on top. She had stared at her Mum, and the Mum had bowed, but Cara was so taken aback by the unexpected encounter, that she forgot to return the salute; then there was a violent jerk, the policeman had given a signal, and the omnibus passed on. What a thing to have happened--she had actually cut her own mother. How funny! CHAPTER XXXV As for Letty Glyn, she returned to Thornby bearing her maiden name; a disgraced wife, who eighteen years previously had left the village in such a blaze of triumph, that its reflection had illuminated three parishes. The knowledge of her altered circumstances had long been public property, and mothers whispered to their daughters as she passed, the story of pretty Miss Letty, sometimes adding: “Aye, she was a rare beauty, and carries her looks still!” A paragraph in a society paper which penetrated to the Indian frontier, informed Colonel Lumley that ‘Hugo Blagdon and his daughter Miss Blagdon had returned to Hill Street from the Riviera.’ So Cara, the blue-eyed, had deserted her mother, and gone over to the enemy! And now Letty was free, since ‘the cause and impediment’ had abandoned her. He determined to go home at once; but leave, what about leave? Camps and manœuvres were on foot--he must bide his time until the autumn. Meanwhile, he wrote and announced his plans and intentions to Mrs. Glyn, Oldcourt, and she showed her friend part of a letter which said: “I shall take three months’ ‘privilege leave’ to England, and I do not intend on this, the third, occasion, to return _alone_.” It was early in September when Colonel Lumley landed at Dover. As he glanced through the day’s papers in the London train, his eye was arrested by this paragraph: “Sudden death of Hugo Blagdon, the well-known sportsman.” It appeared that Mr. Blagdon had had a seizure on a race-course, been conveyed to his hotel in an unconscious condition, and there died. Here, indeed, was news!