he developed a love of money, a passion for material
things. This definite greediness declared itself in her only now that
she was poor and solitary. Probably it had always existed in her, but
had been hidden. She hid it no longer. She tacitly proclaimed it, and
she ordered her life so that it might be satisfied.

And it was satisfied, or at the least for many years appeased. She
became the famous, or the infamous, Mrs. Chepstow. She had no child to
be good for. Her father was dead. Her mother lived in Brussels with some
foreign relations. For her English relations she took no thought. The
divorce case had set them all against her. She put on the panoply of
steel so often assumed by the woman who has got into trouble. She defied
those who were "down upon her." She had made a failure of one life. She
resolved that she would make a success of another. And for a long time
she was very successful. Men were at her feet, and ministered to her
desires. She lived as she seemed to desire to live, magnificently. She
was given more than most good women are given, and she seemed to revel
in its possession. But though she loved money, her parents' traits were
repeated in her. She was a spendthrift, as they had been spendthrifts.
She loved money because she loved spending, not hoarding it. And for
years she scattered it with both hands.

Then, as she approached forty, the freshness of her beauty began to
fade. She had been too well known, and had to endure the fate of those
who have long been talked about. Men said of her, "Mrs. Chepstow--oh,
she's been going a deuce of a time. She must be well over fifty."
Women--good women especially--pronounced her nearer sixty. Almost
suddenly, as often happens in such cases as hers, the roseate hue faded
from her life and a greyness began to fall over it.

She was seen about with very young men, almost boys. People sneered when
they spoke of her. It was said that she was not so well off as she had
been. Some shoddy millionaire had put her into a speculation. It had
gone wrong, and he had not thought it necessary to pay up her losses.
She moved from her house in Park Lane to a flat in Victoria Street, then
to a little house in Kensington. Then she gave that up, and took a small
place in the country, and motored up and down, to and from town. Then
she got sick of that, and went to live in a London hotel. She sold her
yacht. She sold a quantity of diamonds.

And people continued to say, "Mrs. Ch