her capital company. He,
like everyone else, felt her easy fascination, enjoyed being with her.
But, like Rocheouart of the past days, he never thought of her as a
possible lover. Nor did it ever occur to him that she was thinking of
him as a possible husband. He always wanted, and generally managed to
have a splendid time; and he was quite willing to be petted and spoilt
and made much of; but he was not, under a mask of carelessness, a
cold and persistent egoist. He really was just what he seemed to be, a
light-hearted, rather uproarious, and very healthy young man, intent on
enjoying himself, and recklessly indifferent to the future. He was
quite willing to eat Lady Sellingworth's excellent dinners, to ride her
spirited horses, to sit in her opera box and look at pretty women while
others listened to music, but it never occurred to him that it would be
the act of a wise man to try to put her fortune into his own pocket at
the price of marrying her.

His lack of self-interest, which she divined, charmed Lady Sellingworth;
on the other hand, she was tormented by his detachment from her, by
his lack of all vision of the truth of the situation. And she was
perpetually tortured by jealousy.

Before she had been in love with Rupert she had often felt jealous. All
women of her temperament are subject to jealousy, and all middle-aged
people who worship youth unsuitably have felt its sting. But she had
never before known jealousy as she knew it now.

Although she was so often with Rupert she was more often not with him.
He made no pretences of virtue to her or to anyone else. He was a cheery
Pagan, a good sport and--no doubt--a devil among the women. Being
a thorough gentleman he never talked, as some vulgar men do, of his
conquests. But Lady Sellingworth knew that his silence probably covered
a multitude of sins. And her ignorance of the greater part of his life
often ravaged her.

What was he doing when he was not with her? Who was he making love to?

His name was not specially connected with that of any girl whom she knew
in society. But she had reason to know that he spent a lot of his time
out of society in circles to which she had never penetrated. Doubtless
he met quantities of women whose names she had never heard of, unknown
women of the stage, women who went to night clubs, women of the curious
world which floats between the aristocracy and the respectable middle
classes, which is as well dressed as the one and