ful by the fact that Lady Holme was no
longer a beautiful woman. If she had still been lovely they could have
understood it! The wildest rumours as to the terrible result of the
accident upon her had been afloat, and already she had become almost
a legend. It was stated that when poor Lord Holme had first seen her,
after the operation, the shock had nearly turned his brain. And now it
was argued that the only decent thing for a woman in such a plight to
do was to preserve at least her dignity, and to retire modestly from
the fray in which she could no longer hope to hold her own. That she had
indeed retired, but apparently with a man, roused much pious scorn and
pinched regret in those whose lives were passed amid the crash of broken
commandments.

One day, at a tea, a certain lady, animadverted strongly upon Lady
Holme's conduct, and finally remarked:

"It's grotesque! A woman who is disfigured, and a man who is, or at any
rate was, a drunkard! Really it's the most disgusting thing I ever heard
of!"

Lady Cardington happened to be in the room and she suddenly flushed.

"I don't think we know very much about it," she said, and her voice was
rather louder than usual.

"But Lord Holme is going to--" began the lady who had been speaking.

"He may be, and he may succeed. But my sympathies are not with him. He
left his wife when she needed him."

"But what could he have done for her?"

"He could have loved her," said Lady Cardington.

The flush glowed hotter in the face that was generally as white as
ivory.

There was a moment of silence in the room. Then Lady Cardington, getting
up to go, added:

"Whatever happens, I shall admire Mr. Carey as long as I live, and I
wish there were many more men like him in the world."

She went out, leaving a tense astonishment behind her.

Her romantic heart, still young and ardent, though often aching with
sorrow, and always yearning for the ideal love that it had never found,
had divined the truth these chattering women had not imagination enough
to conceive of, soul enough to appreciate if they had conceived of it.

In that Italian winter, far away from London, a very beautiful drama
of human life was being enacted, not the less but the more beautiful
because the man and woman who took part in it had been scourged by fate,
had suffered cruel losses, were in the eyes of many who had known them
well pariahs--Rupert Carey through his fault, Lady Holme through her
misfortun