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parents. Her father, Everard Page, a son of Lord Cheam, had been very
much at home in the Bankruptcy Court. Her mother, too, was reckless
about money, saying, whenever it was mentioned, "Money is given us to
spend, not to hoard." So little did she hoard it, that eventually her
husband published a notice in the principal papers, stating that he
would not be responsible for her debts. It was a very long time since
he had been responsible for his own. Still, there was a certain dignity
in the announcement, as of an honest man frankly declaring his position.

Mrs. Chepstow's life was very possibly influenced by her parents'
pecuniary troubles. When she was young she learnt to be frightened of
poverty. She had known what it was to be "sold up" twice before she was
twenty; and this probably led her to prefer the alternative of being
sold. At any rate, when she was in her twenty-first year, sold she was
to Mr. Wodehouse Chepstow, a rich brewer, to whom she had not even taken
a fancy; and as Mrs. Chepstow she made a great fame in London society as
a beauty. She was christened Bella Donna. She was photographed, written
about, worshipped by important people, until her celebrity spread far
over the world, as the celebrity even of a woman who is only beautiful
and who does nothing can spread in the era of the paragraph.

And then presently she was the heroine of a great divorce case.

Mr. Chepstow, forgetting that among the duties required of the modern
husband is the faculty of turning a blind eye upon the passing fancies
of a lovely and a generally admired wife, suddenly proclaimed some ugly
truths, and completely ruined Mrs. Chepstow's reputation. He won his
case. He got heavy damages out of a well-known, married man. The married
man's wife was forced to divorce him. And Mrs. Chepstow was socially
"done for." Then began the new period of her life, a period utterly
different from all that had preceded it.

She was at this time only twenty-six, and in the zenith of her beauty.
Every one supposed that the man to whom she owed her ruin would marry
her as soon as it was possible. Unfortunately, he died before the decree
_nisi_ was made absolute. Mrs. Chepstow's future had been committed to
the Fates, and they had turned down their thumbs.

Notorious, lovely, now badly off, still young, she was left to shift for
herself in the world.

It was then that there came to the surface of her character a trait that
was not beautiful. S