s had seemed almost the building of a monument to his virtues,
had cast her sables, left the country, and come up to town to reign
again at Dunstanwolde House, which had been swept and garnished.

At Court, and in all the modish houses in the town, one may be sure
that the whole story of her strange life was told and retold with a
score of imaginative touches. Her baby oaths were resworn, her childish
wickedness depicted in colours which glowed, the biographies of the
rough old country rakes who had trained her were related, in free
translation, so to speak, over many a dish of chocolate and tea, and,
these points dwelt on, what more dramatic than to turn upon the
singular fortune of her marriage, the wealth, rank, and reputation of
the man who had so worshipped her, and the unexpectedness of her grace
and decorum the while she bore his name and shared his home with him.

"Had she come up to town," 'twas remarked, "and once having caught him,
played the vixen and the shrew, turned his house into a bear-garden,
behaved unseemly and put him to shame, none would have been
surprised----"

"Many would have been all agog with joy," interrupted old Lady Storms
who heard. "She was a woeful disappointment to many a gossiping woman,
and a lesson to all the shifty fools who sell themselves to a man, and
then trick him out of the price he paid."

At the clubs and coffee-houses the men talked also, though men's
tongues do not run as fast as the tongues of womenkind, and their
gossip was of a masculine order. She was a finer creature than ever,
and at present was the richest widow in England. A man might well lose
his wits over her mere self if she had naught but the gown she stood
in, but he who got her would get all else beside. The new beaux and the
old ones began to buy modish habits and periwigs, adorn themselves with
new sword and shoulder knots, and trifle over the latest essences
offered in the toyshops.

"Split me," said one splendid fop, "but since my lady returned to town
the price of ambergris and bergamot and civet powders has mounted
perilously, and the mercers are all too busy to be civil. When I sent
my rascal this morning to buy the Secret White Water to Curl
Gentlemen's Hair, on my life he was told he must wait for it, since new
must be made, as all had been engaged."

One man at that time appeared at the Cocoa Tree and Cribb's with a new
richness of garb and a look in his face such as had not been seen there