Dear Gerty, how
little imagination you good people have! Why, the beginning was in my
cradle, I suppose--in the way I was brought up, and the things I was
taught to care for. Or no--I won't blame anybody for my faults: I'll say
it was in my blood, that I got it from some wicked pleasure-loving
ancestress, who reacted against the homely virtues of New Amsterdam, and
wanted to be back at the court of the Charleses!" And as Miss Farish
continued to press her with troubled eyes, she went on impatiently: "You
asked me just now for the truth--well, the truth about any girl is that
once she's talked about she's done for; and the more she explains her
case the worse it looks.--My good Gerty, you don't happen to have a
cigarette about you?"

In her stuffy room at the hotel to which she had gone on landing, Lily
Bart that evening reviewed her situation. It was the last week in June,
and none of her friends were in town. The few relatives who had stayed
on, or returned, for the reading of Mrs. Peniston's will, had taken
flight again that afternoon to Newport or Long Island; and not one of
them had made any proffer of hospitality to Lily. For the first time in
her life she found herself utterly alone except for Gerty Farish. Even at
the actual moment of her break with the Dorsets she had not had so keen a
sense of its consequences, for the Duchess of Beltshire, hearing of the
catastrophe from Lord Hubert, had instantly offered her protection, and
under her sheltering wing Lily had made an almost triumphant progress to
London. There she had been sorely tempted to linger on in a society which
asked of her only to amuse and charm it, without enquiring too curiously
how she had acquired her gift for doing so; but Selden, before they
parted, had pressed on her the urgent need of returning at once to her
aunt, and Lord Hubert, when he presently reappeared in London, abounded
in the same counsel. Lily did not need to be told that the Duchess's
championship was not the best road to social rehabilitation, and as she
was besides aware that her noble defender might at any moment drop her in
favour of a new PROTEGEE, she reluctantly decided to return to America.
But she had not been ten minutes on her native shore before she realized
that she had delayed too long to regain it. The Dorsets, the Stepneys,
the Brys--all the actors and witnesses in the miserable drama--had
preceded her with their version of the case; and, even had she seen the