But now that Molly was being compromised by the old fellow's attentions, it was another matter.
That anybody else could have compromised her by his attentions did not once occur to Mrs.Wilcox.By its magnificent unlikelihood, the idea that Sir Peter Morley, M.P., was fascinated by her daughter extinguished every other.

So possessed was Mrs.Wilcox by the idea of Sir Peter that she had never thought of Stanistreet.

In any case Stanistreet was the last person she would have thought of.

He came and went without her notice, a familiar, and therefore insignificant, fact of her daily life.
Of course Molly was a desperate little flirt; but it was absurd that her flirtations should be made responsible for "this temporary separation." (That was the mild phrase by which Mrs.Wilcox described Tyson's desertion of his wife.) As for her encouraging Sir Peter in her husband's absence, that was all nonsense.

Mrs.Wilcox was a woman of the world, and she would have passed the whole thing off with a laugh, but that, really, the reports were so scandalous.