er which convinced me that beneath
all her smiles she bore me no good-will. The fact is that, without any
design on my part, I had detected her in one or two bits of trickery,
and, in what I suppose I must call her heart of hearts, she never
forgave me. The truth is, though her guileless husband only knew it
too late, she was perhaps the trickiest and the most heartless woman
in England. If there were two roads to the attainment of any object,
the one straight, broad, smooth and short, the other round-about,
obscure, narrow and encompassed with pitfalls and beset by
difficulties, she would deliberately choose the latter for no other
reason that I could ever see except that by treading it she might be
able to deceive her friends as to her true direction. She carried
to a fine art the small intrigues, the petty jealousies, the mean
manoeuvres in the science of outwitting; the shifts, the stratagems,
the evasions by which power in Society is often supposed to be
confirmed, reputations are frequently ruined, and lives are almost
invariably made wretched. But Sir CHARLES knew none of these
things. He was apparently only too proud to be dragged at his wife's
chariot-wheels in her triumphant progress. For the strange part of
the business is that there was absolutely no need for any of her
deeply-laid schemes. Success, popularity and esteem would have come
to her readily without them. She was, as I said, beautiful. Innocence
seemed to be throned on her fresh and glowing face. Her smile
fascinated, her voice was a poem, and she was musical in the best
sense of the word at a time when good music, although it might lack
popular support, could always command a small band of enthusiastic
votaries in London.

There was at this time living in London an Italian artist, man
of letters and musical _virtuoso_, who was the spoiled darling of
Society. All the women raved about him, the men liked him, for he had
fought bravely on the field of battle, was a sportsman and had about
him that frank and abundant _gaiete de coeur_, which powerfully
attracts the less exuberant Englishman. For his part CASANUOVA (that
was his name) bore all his successes with good-nature and without
swagger. Of course there were whispers about him. Where so many women
worshipped, it was certain that two or three would lose their heads.
Amongst this limited number was little Mrs. MILLETT, one of Lady
CALLENDER's most intimate friends. She made no secret of her _gran