Leila Mortimer arrived from Swan's Harbour toward the middle of the month, offering no information as to the whereabouts of what Major Belwether delicately designated as her "legitimate." But everybody knew he was at last to be crossed off and struck clean out, and the ugly history of the winter, now so impudently corroborated at Saratoga, gave many a hostess the opportunity long desired.

Mortimer, as far as his own particular circle was concerned, was down and out; Leila, accepted as a matter of course without him, remained quietly uncommunicative.

If the outward physical change in her was due to her marital rupture people thought it was well that it had come in time, for she bloomed like a lovely exotic; and her silences and enthusiasms, and the fragrant freshness of her developing attitude toward the world first disconcerted, then amused, then touched those who had supposed themselves to be so long a buckler for her foibles and a shield for her caprice.
"Gad," said Alderdene, "she's well rid of him if he's been choking her this long--the rank, rotten weed that he is, sapping the life from her so when she hung over toward another fellow's bush we thought she was frail in the stem--God bless us all for a simpering lot of blatherskites!" And if, in the corner of the gun-room, there was a man among them who had ever ventured to hold Leila's smooth little hand, unrebuked, in days gone by, none the less he knew that Alderdene spoke truth; and none the less he knew that what witness he might be called to bear at the end of the end of all must only incriminate himself and not that young matron who now, before their very eyes, was budding again, reverting to the esoteric charm of youth reincarnated.
"A suit before a referee would settle him," mused Voucher; "he hasn't a leg to stand on.

Lord! The same cat that tripped up Stephen Siward!" Fleetwood's quick eyes glimmered for an instant in Quarrier's direction.
Quarrier was in the billiard-room, out of earshot, practising balk-line problems with Major Belwether; and Fleetwood said: "The same cat that tripped up Stephen Siward.Yes.But who let her loose ?" "It was your dinner; you ought to know," said Voucher bluntly.
"I do know.

He brought her"-- nodding toward the billiard-room.
"Belwether ?" "No," yawned Fleetwood.
Somebody said presently: "Isn't he one of the Governors?
Oh, I say, that was rather rough on Siward though." "Yes, rough.