mour Portman knew the secret of Lady Sellingworth's abrupt
desertion of the "old guard" and plunge into old age. But even he did
not know it. For he loved her in a still, determined, undeviating way.
And no woman would care to tell such a secret to a man who loved her and
who was almost certain, barring the explosion of a moral bombshell, and
perhaps even then, to go on loving her.

No one knew why Lady Sellingworth had abruptly and finally emerged from
the world of illusions in which she had lived. But possibly a member of
the underworld, a light-fingered gentleman of brazen assurance, had long
ago guessed the reason for her sudden departure from the regiment of
which she had been a conspicuous member; possibly he had guessed, or
surmised, why she had sent in her papers. But even he could scarcely be
certain.

The truth of the matter was this.

PART TWO

CHAPTER I

Lady Sellingworth belonged to a great English family, and had been
brought up in healthy splendour, saved from the canker of too much
luxury by the aristocratic love of sport which is a tradition in such
English families as hers. As a girl she had been what a certain sporting
earl described as "a leggy beauty." Even then she had shown a decided
inclination to run wild and had seldom checked the inclination.
Unusually tall and athletic, rather boyish in appearance, and of the
thin, greyhound type, she had excelled in games and held her own in
sports. She had shot in an era when comparatively few women shot, and in
the hunting-field she had shown a reckless courage which had fascinated
the hard-riding men who frequented her father's house. As she grew older
her beauty had rapidly developed, and with it an insatiable love of
admiration. Early she had realized that she was going to be a beauty,
and had privately thanked the gods for her luck. She could scarcely have
borne not to be a beauty; but, mercifully, it was all right. Woman's
greatest gift was to be hers. When she looked into the glass and knew
that, when she looked into men's eyes and knew it even more definitely,
she felt merciless and eternal. In the dawn no end was in sight; in the
dawn no end seemed possible.

From the age of sixteen onwards hers was the intimate joy, certainly
one of the greatest, if not the greatest of all the joys of women, of
knowing that all men looked at her with pleasure, that many men looked
at her with longing, that she was incessantly desired.

From the