He came in now, during the silence that had fallen on the two women--a short, stout, red-faced man, with a bald head, and a weak chin, and a drooping foxy moustache turning grey. He was bursting with an interminable tale of scandal that he had picked up at his club--a respectable institution with an inner coterie of vapid, middle-aged dullards whose cackle was the terror of half London society. It is a superstition among good women that man is too noble a creature to descend to gossip. Ten minutes in the members' smoking-room of the Burlington Club would paralyse the most scandal-mongering tabby of Bath, Cheltenham, or Tunbridge Wells. “We were sure she was a wrong 'un from the first,” he explained in a thick, jerky voice to his listless auditors. “And now it turns out that she was in thick with poor Billy Withers, you know, and when Billy broke his neck--that was through another blessed woman--I'll tell you all about her by'm bye--when Billy broke his neck, his confounded valet got hold of Mrs. Jack's letters, and how she paid for 'em's the cream of the story--” “We need not have that now, Benjamin,” said Mrs. Hardacre, with a warning indication that reverence was due to the young. “Well, of course that's the end of it,” replied Mr. Hardacre, in some confusion. But Norma rose with a laugh of hard mockery. “The valet entered the service of Lord Wyniard, and now there's a pretty little divorce case in the air, with Jack Dugdale as petitioner and Lord Wyniard as corespondent. Are n't you sorry, mother, I did n't marry Wyniard and reform him, and save society this terrible scandal?” Turning from her disconcerted parents, Norma pulled back the thick curtains from the French window and opened one of the doors. “What are you doing that for?” cried Mrs. Hardacre irritably, as the cold air of a wet May night swept through the room. “I'm going to try to ventilate my soul,” said Norma, stepping on to the balcony. Chapter II--THE FOOL'S WISDOM LIKE the inexplicable run on a particular number at the roulette-table, there often seems to be a run on some particular phenomenon thrown up by the wheel of daily life. Such a recurrent incident was the meeting of Norma and Jimmie Padgate during the next few weeks. She met him at Mrs. Deering's, she ran across him in the streets. Going to spend a weekend out of town, she found him on the platform of Paddington Station. The series of sheer coincidences established between them a certain familiarity. When next they met, it was in the crush of an emptying theatre. They found themselves blocked side by side, and they laughed as their eyes met. “This seems to have got out of the domain of vulgar chance and become Destiny,” she said lightly. “I am indeed favoured by the gods,” he replied. “You don't deserve their good will because you have never come to see me.”