The newspapers announced the fact and spoke vaguely of a breakdown which prevented the lady from fulfilling her social engagements.
T.X., ever a Doubting Thomas, could trace no visit of nerve specialist, nor yet of the family practitioner, to the official residence in Downing Street, and therefore he drew conclusions.

In his own "Who's Who" T.
X.noted the hobbies of his victims which, by the way, did not always coincide with the innocent occupations set against their names in the more pretentious volume.

Their follies and their weaknesses found a place and were recorded at a length (as it might seem to the uninformed observer) beyond the limit which charity allowed.
Lady Mary Bartholomew's name appeared not once, but many times, in the erratic records which T.X.kept.

There was a plain matter-of-fact and wholly unobjectionable statement that she was born in 1874, that she was the seventh daughter of the Earl of Balmorey, that she had one daughter who rejoiced in the somewhat unpromising name of Belinda Mary, and such further information as a man might get without going to a great deal of trouble.
T.X., refreshing his memory from the little red book, wondered what unexpected tragedy had sent Lady Bartholomew out of London in the middle of the season.

The information was that the lady was fairly well off at this moment, and this fact made matters all the more puzzling and almost induced him to believe that, after all, the story was true, and a nervous breakdown really was the cause of her sudden departure.