Prologue

“Tell me something about the Lextons, Mary. Where did you pick them up?” asked Lady Flora Desmond of her hostess, Mrs. Hampton. “As I looked at Mrs. Lexton during dinner, I thought I had never seen a prettier face. When I was a child, your little friend would have been what people then called a professional beauty.”

“She certainly is very pretty, and a regular honey-pot! Look at her now, with Miles Rushworth?”

The speaker nodded towards the wide-open French window of the high-ceilinged, oval eighteenth-century sitting-room. She and two other women were sitting there together after dinner, on the Saturday evening of what Mrs. Hampton thought promised to be a very successful week-end party.

The window gave access to a broad stone terrace. Beyond the terrace lay a wide lawn, bathed in bright moonlight, and across the lawn sauntered very slowly two figures, that of a tall man, and that of a slender woman dressed in a light-coloured frock. They were moving away from the beautiful old country-house where they were both staying as guests, making for an avenue of beeches.

Mary Hampton went on, speaking not unkindly, but with a certain tartness: “He took her out in his motor after tea, so she might have left him alone after dinner.”

“You oughtn’t to complain, my dear! You told me this morning that you had asked the Lextons this week-end so that they could make friends with your millionaire,” observed Joan Rodney.

She was a sharp-tongued, clever spinster who enjoyed putting her friends right, and telling them home truths. Much was forgiven to Miss Rodney because she was, if sharp-tongued, fundamentally kind-hearted.

“My millionaire, as you call him, is one of the finest amateur billiard-players in England. I made Jack get hold of the best of the young ‘pros.’ He could only spare us this evening, and now that all the men, and two of the women, are either playing or watching the play in the billiard-room, Miles is philandering with Ivy Lexton in the garden!”

“Not philandering, Mary,” observed Lady Flora, smiling. “Mr. Rushworth never philanders.”

“Well! You know what I mean. It’s my fault, of course. I ought to have known that no party would be big enough to hold Ivy Lexton and another attraction. Last time she was here she snatched such a nice boy from his best girl, and stopped, I’m afraid, a proposal.”

Lady Flora looked sorry. A plain woman herself, she admired, without a touch of envy, physical beauty more than she admired anything else in the world.

“I don’t suppose Mrs. Lexton can help attracting men. It’s human nature after all——”

Quoted Joan Rodney, with a sharp edge to her voice:

“It’s human nature but, if so, oh! Isn’t human nature low?”

“Little Ivy isn’t exactly low; at least I hope not,” observed little Ivy’s hostess reflectively. “But I do feel that there’s a curiously soulless quality about her. Though she’s not what people call clever, there’s something baffling about Ivy Lexton. I liked her much better when I first knew her.”

“She mayn’t be what silly people call clever, but she’s plenty of what used to be called ‘nous,’ ” said Miss Rodney drily. “She engineered her stroll with Mr. Rushworth very cleverly to-night. Your husband was determined to get him into the billiard-room——”

“She had a good excuse for that, Joan. As I told you yesterday, Jervis Lexton has been looking out for something to do for a long while.”

Mrs. Hampton turned to her other friend. “It suddenly occurred to me, Flora, that Miles Rushworth, who must have many jobs in his gift, might find Jervis Lexton something to do. Ivy knows that I asked them both for this week-end on purpose that they might meet him. It isn’t easy to get hold of him for this kind of party.”

“Have you known the Lextons long, Mary?” asked Lady Flora.

She felt genuinely interested in Mrs. Jervis Lexton. The quiet, old-fashioned, some would have said very limited, middle-aged widow, and lovely, restless, self-absorbed, and very modern Ivy Lexton, had “made friends.”

“I have known Jervis ever since he was born. His father was a friend of my father’s. But I had not seen him for years till I ran across him, in town, about three months ago. The last time I had seen him was early in the war, when his father had just died, and he had been given a fortnight’s leave. He’s what Jack calls quite a good sort; but it’s bad for a young man to become his own master at twenty. He seems to have married this lovely little thing when he was twenty-two. That’s six years ago.”

“They seem to get on very well,” observed Lady Flora.

“I think they do, though I’m afraid they’ve muddled away most of his money in having what Ivy considers a good time. He must have come into a fair fortune, for his father had sold their place just before the war.”

“What fools young people seem to be to-day—I mean compared to the old days!” exclaimed Joan Rodney harshly.

She went on: “John Oram—you know, Mary, the big solicitor—once told me that of ten men who sell their land at any given time, only two have anything of the purchase-price left at the end of ten years.”

“Jervis Lexton won’t be one of those two men,” said his hostess regretfully. “Ivy told me to-day that they’re fearfully hard up.”

“People often say that when it is laughably untrue! It’s the fashion to pretend one’s poor. Mrs. Lexton dresses beautifully. She must spend a great deal of money on her clothes,” interjected Joan Rodney.

“I’m afraid there was no pretence about what Ivy told me this morning. She looked really worried, poor little thing! I do hope she will get something good for Jervis out of Miles Rushworth.”

“She makes most of her frocks herself; it’s so easy nowadays,” said Lady Flora. And then she added: “She was telling me to-day about her girlhood. Her father failed in business, through no fault of his own, and for a little while she was on the stage——”

“Only a walking-on part in a musical comedy,” observed Joan Rodney, “if what her husband, who strikes me as an honest young fellow, told me is true. However, I’m surprised, even so, that she didn’t do better for herself in what I have heard described as the straight road to the peeresses’ gallery, to say nothing of ‘another place.’ ”

“Joan! Joan!” cried Mrs. Hampton deprecatingly.

Miss Rodney got up and came across to where her hostess sat under a heavily-shaded lamp.

She put her left elbow on the marble mantelpiece, and looking down into the other’s now upturned face, “I don’t like your little friend,” she said deliberately. “I’ve been studying her closely ever since she arrived on Thursday afternoon, though she didn’t seem aware of my existence till after lunch to-day. When I was in America last year, they’d invented a name for that sort of young woman. She’s out, all the time, for what she can get. ‘A gold-digger’—that’s the slang American term for that kind of young person, Mary. I know what I’m talking about.”

“How can you possibly know?”

“By instinct, my dear! If I were you I should give pretty Mrs. Lexton a very wide berth.”

And then, rather to the relief of the other two, she exclaimed, “Having done what’s always foolish—that is, said exactly what I think—I’m off to watch the champion billiard-player.”

After she had left the room, Mrs. Hampton said slowly, “It’s sad to hear a good woman, for Joan is really a good woman, say such cruel, unkind things.”

“It’s odd, too, for no one can show more real understanding sympathy when one’s in trouble,” answered Lady Flora in a low voice. She was remembering a time of frightful sorrow in her own life, when Joan Rodney had been one of the few friends whose presence had not jarred on her.

“Ah, well! She’s devoted to you. Also, you’re an angel, Flora, so there’s no great merit in being kind to you. What Joan Rodney can’t forgive in another woman is youth, happiness——”

“And, I suppose, beauty,” interjected Lady Flora. “Yet to me there is something so disarming, so pathetic, about Mrs. Lexton.”

“Then Joan has such a poor opinion of human nature,” went on Mrs. Hampton in a vexed tone. “You heard with what delight she quoted that horrid little bit of doggerel. Still, quite between ourselves, Flora, I must admit that, in a sense, she is more right than she knows about Ivy Lexton.”

Lady Flora looked dismayed. “In what way, Mary?”

“Ivy is very fond of money, or rather of spending it. In fact she is idiotically extravagant. She is dancing mad, and belongs to the two most expensive night clubs in town. It’s her fault that they’ve frittered away a lot of Jervis Lexton’s capital. Also, there’s a side to her, for all her pretty manners, that isn’t pretty at all.”

“How d’you mean?” and the other looked puzzled.

Mrs. Hampton hesitated. Then she smiled a little ruefully. “My maid told me that when Ivy arrived she was quite rude to Annie—you know, my nice old housemaid?—because there was no bottle of scent on her dressing-table! There was one, it seems, last time she was here. It had been left by some visitor—I don’t undertake to provide such luxuries.”

“That doesn’t sound very nice, certainly,” Lady Flora looked naïvely surprised.

“Then, if I’m to be really honest, my dear, there’s no doubt that one reason why Joan Rodney has taken such a ferocious dislike to Ivy Lexton is owing to the fact that I stupidly told Ivy this morning of Joan’s marvellous bit of luck—I mean of that big legacy from the American cousin. I’m afraid that’s why Ivy, who behaved all yesterday as if Joan hardly existed, began at once to make up to her! But pretty ways are very much lost on our Joan.”

She began to laugh. She really couldn’t help it, remembering the way her friend had received the younger woman’s overtures of friendship.

Lady Flora looked disturbed, for she was one of those rare human beings to whom it is a pain to think ill of anybody.

“After all, Joan’s money is of no good to anyone but herself, Mary? I don’t see why you should suppose poor little Mrs. Lexton made up to her because of that legacy.”

The other looked at her fixedly.

“Ivy Lexton has a good deal in common with the heroine of Jack’s favourite drawing-room story.”

“What story?” asked Lady Flora. Her host’s rather sly sense of humour had never appealed to her, though they were quite good friends.

“The story of the lady who said to her husband, ‘Oh, do let’s go and see them; they’re so rich!’ to be met with the answer, ‘My dear, I would if it was catching!’ ”

Lady Flora looked a little puzzled. “He was quite right. Money is not catching, though I suppose most people wish it were.”

“A great many people are convinced that it is, Flora, and our little Ivy is among them. I’m sure she feels that if she rubs herself up against it close enough, a little will certainly come off. And I’m not sure, in her case, that she’s not right!”

But Lady Flora could be obstinate in her mild way.

“I like Mrs. Lexton,” she said gently. “I’m going to call on her when we’re all in town again. She’s promised to take me to a nice quiet night club. I’ve always longed to see one. I want my sister-in-law, I mean Jenny, to know her. Jenny loves young people. She gives amusing little dances——”

“I think you’ll make a mistake if you introduce Ivy to the Duchess.”

“I don’t see why, my dear? After all, Mary, your little friend has been very sweet to me, and that though she knows I’m really poor.”

The other woman gave a quick look at her friend. Sometimes she thought Flora Desmond too good, too simple, even for human nature’s daily food.

Chapter One

The July sun shone slantwise into the ugly, almost sordid-looking bedroom where Ivy Lexton, still only half dressed, had just begun making up her lovely face in front of a tarnished, dust-powdered toilet-glass.

It was nine o’clock in the morning; an hour ago she had had her cup of tea and—mindful of her figure—the hard biscuit which was the only thing she allowed herself by way of breakfast. Her husband, hopelessly idle, easy-natured, well-bred Jervis Lexton, was still fast asleep in the little back bedroom his wife called his dressing-room, but which was their box-room and general “glory-hole.”

Everything that had been of any real value there had gradually disappeared in the last few weeks, for Ivy and Jervis Lexton, to use their own rueful expression, were indeed stony-broke.

Yet they had started their married life, six years before, with a capital of sixty-eight thousand pounds. Now they were almost penniless. Indeed, what Ivy called to herself with greater truth than was usual “her little all,” that is, a pound note, and twelve shillings and sixpence in silver, lay on the stained, discoloured mahogany dressing-table before which she was now standing.

How amazed would her still large circle of friends and acquaintances have been had they learnt how desperate and how hopeless was her own and her husband’s financial position. Yesterday she had even tried to sell two charming frocks brought back for her by a good-natured friend from Paris. But she had only been offered a few shillings for the two, so she had brought them home again.

And now, as her eyes fell on the pound note and tiny heap of silver, they filled with angry tears. How she loathed these sordid, hateful lodgings! What a terrible, even a terrifying thing, it was to have fallen so low as to have to live here, in two shabby, ill-kept bedrooms, where there wasn’t even a hanging cupboard for her pretty clothes, and where the drawers of the painted deal chest of drawers would neither shut nor open.

The Lextons had come there for two reasons. One, a stupid reason, because their landlady was the widow of a man who had been employed as a lad in the stables of Jervis Lexton’s father. A better reason was that, owing to there being no bathroom in the house, the rooms were amazingly, fantastically cheap. The Lextons had already been camping here, as Ivy’s husband put it, for some months, but they rarely gave any of their friends their address. Jervis still belonged to a famous club to which some of his rich men acquaintances would have given much to belong; and Ivy had a guinea subscription to a small bridge club from which her letters were forwarded each day.

There came a knock at the bedroom door. It was a funny, fumbling knock, and she knew it for that of the landlady’s little boy.

Flinging a pale pink lace-trimmed wrapper round her, “Come in,” she called out sharply.

The child came in, holding in his grubby hand two letters.

She took them from him, and quickly glanced at the envelopes. The one, inscribed in a firm masculine handwriting to her present, Pimlico, address, she put down on the dressing-table unopened. She knew, or thought she knew, so well what it contained.

There had been a time, not so very long ago, when Ivy Lexton’s beautiful eyes would have shone at the sight of that handwriting. A time when she would have torn that envelope open at once, so that her senses could absorb with delight the ardent protestations of love written on the large plain sheet of paper that envelope contained.

But she no longer felt “like that” towards her daily correspondent, Roger Gretorex. Also she was going to see him this morning in the hope, nay, the certainty, that he would help to tide over this horrid moment of difficulty, by giving her whatever money he could put his hands on.

Gretorex was of a very different stamp from the men who had up to now fallen in love with her. He worshipped her with all his heart and soul, while yet conscious that he was now doing what, before he had been tempted, he would have unhesitatingly condemned in another man. As to that, and other matters of less moment, he was what Ivy Lexton felt to be ludicrously old-fashioned, and she had soon become weary of him, and satiated with the jealous devotion he lavished on her.

Also, Roger Gretorex was poor; not poor as Ivy’s husband had become, largely through his own fault and hers, but through that of his father, a great Sussex squire, who had gambled and muddled away his only son’s inheritance. That was why Gretorex was a doctor, and not what the woman he loved would have liked him to be, an idle young man of means.

The other envelope was addressed in a woman’s flowing hand, and it had been sent on from Ivy’s bridge club.

The writer of the many sheets this thick, cream-laid envelope contained was named Rose Arundell. She was a well-to-do, generous, rather foolish young widow, who had taken a great fancy to lovely Mrs. Jervis Lexton. Mrs. Arundell had been, nay, was, a most useful friend, and a look of dismay shadowed Ivy Lexton’s face as she read on and on, till she reached the end of the long letter.

Wednesday afternoon. Ivy, darling, I have the most astounding news to tell you! I’ll begin at the beginning. Besides, I can’t help thinking—for I know you’re rather worried just now, poor dear—that it may be of help to you. D’you remember my telling you last time we met at that tiresome fête where we couldn’t see each other for a moment alone, that I’d had a wonderful adventure? That I’d been to a fortune-teller? Her name is Mrs. Thrawn. She lives at No. 1 Ranelagh Reach on the Embankment. Her fee is a pound—and I feel inclined to send her a thousand pounds when I think of what she has done for me! I don’t mind telling you now that I was on the point of taking that silly boy, Ronny. No one knows but myself how horribly lonely I’ve been. Well, I thought I’d go and see this Mrs. Thrawn and hear what she’d got to say; for, after all, I didn’t love Ronny, and I always had a dreadful suspicion it was my money he liked, rather than me. Well, my dear, I went off trembling. But I can’t tell you how

wonderful she was! She described Ronny and warned me against him. Then she said that an extraordinary change was coming over my life, and that if I would only be patient and wait, everything I had most longed for would come to pass. She was most awfully kind—really kind. She said that if I was sensible and did what she said—I mean refuse Ronny—I should take a long journey very soon to a place that she, Mrs. Thrawn, knew well and loved; and that I should be very, very happy there. That place was India, as I knew, for the woman who first told me about Mrs. Thrawn said she was the widow of a missionary! And then, oh, Ivy, what do you think happened? I wonder if you remember all I told you about the soldier who was my first love? The man whom my mother would not let me marry and who did so splendidly in the war? He’s home on leave from India, where he has a splendid appointment. We ran across one another in the street, and I asked him to come and see me. You can guess the rest! His leave is up by the end of next week. We shall be married very

quietly on Thursday, and sail for India on Friday. I’m in a whirl, as you can imagine. I’d love to have you at my wedding, darling, for you really are my dearest friend. But he doesn’t want anyone there who didn’t know us both in the old days, before the war. He hasn’t a bean, but, thank God, I’ve plenty for us both! Your devoted Rose.

Ivy Lexton put the long letter she had just read down on the dressing-table. Then she took up the other, still unopened, envelope, and stuffed it into her bag. After all she could read the letter it contained in the omnibus, on her way to see Roger Gretorex. He had taken over for a friend a slum practice in Westminster, and he lived in what Ivy called a horrid little street named Ferry Place.