He was just the man to interest Lady Gladys in her unhappy frame of mind; he was so different from all the other men about her. His cosmopolitan cynicism was so refreshing to her, his sophistry so seductive. She also, in her turn, interested him much, for there was no doubt she had brains. Women to him were usually more or less of toys, but Lady Gladys was an intellectual being, she exercised his mental fencing powers, and was difficult wooing. He hated Society, it was too silly to amuse him, but he was obliged to endure it for the sake of Lady Gladys. He meant to be her lover, so he allowed her to procure him invitations to a series of “at homes,” where he should meet her. He would attend her daily in the Park, he would drop in every afternoon at teatime, and if she was going to the theatre, he would, of course, have a stall next to hers. And all the while this love-making was prosecuted with masterly tactics, and she was falling deeply in love with him. She had never known love in her life before, and now it filled her life, and made it tolerable. What her lover lacked in emotional delicacies and sentimental refinements, she supplied out of her own imagination, and was not aware that he lacked them; and she was comparatively happy, and cared little or nothing for her husband’s petty tyrannies. She was becoming hardened to them—and had not she now a lover as well as her child to love? After all, love makes up the sum of our lives; it is the only thing we cannot miss without being wretched. Lady Gladys had had everything else till now, and now she loved and believed herself loved. Might she not be happy in spite of Sir Drury? Though she was tied to him for life, what happiness had he ever given her? But now people began to busy themselves with gossip about Lady Gladys, to wonder how long it would be before Sir Drury woke up to the state of affairs. It was only a whisper here and there, of course; but still it was a whisper, and even whispers are sometimes heard by those not intended to hear. So Sir Drury heard, not that he had not known before; but it was only the whisper that gave him a weapon to strike with. She loathed him; she had told him so more than once; then she should not love another. So when her lover called as usual one day, he was told that Lady Gladys could not receive him, but that Sir Drury would be glad to see him in his study; and then the cold-blooded old judge told him of the whisper, and left it to him to discontinue his visits. Lady Gladys waited long for her lover that day, and when she heard at length that he had come and gone, she was furiously indignant. Of course, he felt bound in honour to give her the option of running away with him, but he was not sorry when she refused on account of her child. “She would only have run away with some one else later on,” was the reflection with which he cynically consoled himself.