But Corinna’s ears, almost abnormally alert, heard the Duchess’s low-pitched voice, just as they went by, saying: “—and Bruce, only to think, we’ll have all—”

Corinna, holding with her fingers to the counter, her eyes closed, swayed slightly and felt herself growing sick and weak. Passionately she prayed that she would not faint and draw a crowd about her. But within a few seconds she had regained control of herself. “And I’ll take twelve yards of this silver ribbon, Mrs. Sheldon. I think that will be all.” Even before her waiting-woman had finished paying for them Corinna turned and started away in the opposite direction, longing to get back into the safety and solitude of her coach.

That night, to her own surprise, Corinna heard herself say to Bruce, in a voice which sounded impersonal and but politely interested: “What did you do this afternoon, darling? Play tennis with his Majesty?”

They were in the bed-chamber and he was writing a letter to his overseer while she sat brushing their three-year-old daughter’s hair. “For a while,” he said, pausing with the pen in his hand to glance around. “Then I went to the House of Lords for an hour or two.”

He returned to his writing and she continued, automatically, to brush Melinda’s hair. Even now that it had happened she could scarcely believe that he would lie to her. Melinda, a black-haired blue-eyed miniature of her mother, looked up into Corinna’s face with her eyes large and serious and solemn, ducking her head a little at each stroke of the brush. And at last as Corinna leaned over to kiss her an unexpected tear splashed onto the little girl’s head. Hastily Corinna brushed it away with her hand, lest Melinda should notice and ask why she was crying.

Corinna felt that her life had ended.

It was enough now for her merely to see the Duchess of Ravenspur look at Bruce to know that he was her lover. How could she have been so simple as not to have realized it long ago? For now she had no doubt that the affair had begun when they had first reached England—or perhaps much earlier. He might have met her when he had gone there in sixty-seven, for she knew that the Duchess had been at Court then and some of the women had taken pains to let her know about her residence at that time in Almsbury House.

They would have told her more—all the things she both wanted and dreaded to know—but she refused to let them. And for some reason, perhaps the very fact that she was so different from them, they were a little kinder; they did not force her to hear it against her will.

But this could not go on indefinitely. Something must happen—what would it be?

Would he send her back to her father in Jamaica and remain here in London himself? Or perhaps he would even take the Duchess with him to Summerhill—to her own lovely Summerhill which she had named and which they had built together out of their dreams and their love and their limitless plans and hopes for the future. All the things that were gone now. They must be gone, since he loved another woman.

For several days Corinna, not knowing what she should do, did nothing. She thought it could do no good to accuse him. For what did it matter whether he would deny it or not—since the fact could not be denied? He was thirty-eight years old and had always done as he liked; he would not change now and she did not in any real sense want to change him for she loved him as he was. She felt lost and utterly helpless here in this strange land, surrounded by strange manners and strange customs. The ladies here, she realized, had all of them doubtless met this same situation many times, tossed it off with a smile and a witty phrase and turned to find their own amusement elsewhere. She had never realized so acutely as now what Bruce had often told her—that she was not a part of this world at all. Everything inside her recoiled from it with horror and disgust.

When he took her into his arms, kissed her, lay with her in bed, she could not put the thought of that other woman out of her mind. She would wonder, though she despised herself for it, how recently he had kissed the Duchess, and spoken the same words of passion he spoke to her. Why doesn’t he tell me? she asked herself desperately. Why should he cheat me and lie to me this way? It isn’t fair! But it was the Duchess she hated—not Bruce.

And then one day Lady Castlemaine paid her a visit.

King Charles had recently given the Duchess of Ravenspur a money grant of twenty thousand pounds and Barbara was so furious that she was determined to make trouble for her in some way. She was convinced that any woman—even a wife—of Corinna’s beauty must have considerable influence with a man and she hoped to spoil her Grace’s game with Lord Carlton. Very convenient to her purpose, Rochester had just written another of his scurrilous rhymed lampoons—this one on the intrigue between the Duchess and his Lordship.

It was Rochester’s habit to dress one of his footmen as a sentry and post him about the Palace at night, there to observe who went abroad at late hours. With information thus secured he would retire to his country-estate and write his nasty satires, several copies of which would be scribbled out and sent back anonymously to be circulated through the Court. They always pleased everyone but the subject, but the Earl was impartial—sooner or later every man and woman of any consequence might expect to feel the poisonous stab of his pen.

For the first few minutes of her visit Barbara made trifling but pleasant conversation—the brand-new French gowns called sacques, yesterday’s play at the Duke’s Theatre, the great ball which was to be held in the Banqueting House next week. And then all at once she was launched upon the current crop of love-affairs, who slept with whom, what lady feared herself to be with child by a man not her husband, who had most recently caught a clap. Corinna, guessing what all this was leading to, felt her heart begin to pound and her breath choked short.

“Oh, Lord,” continued Barbara airily, “the way things go here—I vow and swear an outsider would never guess. There’s more than meets the eye, let me tell you.” She paused, watching Corinna closely now, and then she said, “My dear, you’re very young and innocent, aren’t you?”

“Why,” said Corinna, surprised, “I suppose I am:”

“I’m afraid that you don’t altogether understand the way of the world—and as one who knows it only too well I’ve come to you as a friend to—”

Corinna, tired of the weeks of worry and uncertainty, the sense of sordidness and of helpless disillusion, felt suddenly relieved. Now at last it would come out. She need not, could not, pretend any longer.

“I believe, madame,” she said quietly, “that I understand some things much better than you may think.”

Barbara gave her a look of surprise at that, but nevertheless she drew from her muff a folded paper and extended it to Corinna. “That’s circulating the Court—I didn’t want you to be the last to see it.”

Slowly Corinna’s hand reached out and took it. The heavy sheet crackled as she unfolded it. Reluctantly she dragged her eyes from Barbara’s coolly speculative face and forced them down to the paper where eight lines of verse were written in a cramped angular hand. Somehow the weeks of misery and suspicion she had endured had cushioned her mind against further shock, for though she read the coarse brutal little poem it meant no more to her than so many separate words.

Then, as graciously as if Barbara had brought her a little gift, perhaps a box of sweetmeats or a pair of gloves, she said, “Thank you, madame. I appreciate your concern for me.”

Barbara seemed surprised at this mild reaction, and disappointed too, but she got to her feet and Corinna walked to the door with her. In the anteroom she stopped. For a moment the two women were silent, facing each other, and then Barbara said: “I remember when I was your age—twenty, aren’t you?—I thought that all the world lay before me and that I could have whatever I wanted of it.” She smiled, a strangely reflective cynical smile. “Well—I have.” Then, almost abruptly, she added, “Take my advice and get your husband away from here before it’s too late,” and turning swiftly she walked on, down the corridor, and disappeared.

Corinna watched her go, frowning a little. Poor lady, she thought. How unhappy she is. Softly she closed the door.


Bruce did not return home that night until after one o’clock. She had sent word to him at Whitehall that she was not well enough to come to Court, but had asked him not to change his own plans. She had hoped, passionately, that he would—but he did not. She found it impossible to sleep and when she heard him come in she was sitting up in bed, propped against pillows and pretending to read a recent play of John Dryden’s.

He did not come into the bedroom but, as always, went into the nursery first to see the children for a moment. Corinna sat listening to the sound of his steps moving lightly over the floor, the soft closing of the door behind him—and knew all at once that little Bruce was the Duchess’s son. She wondered why she had not realized it long ago. That was why he had told her almost nothing at all of the woman who supposedly had been the first Lady Carlton. That was why the little boy had been so eager to return and had coaxed his father to take him back to England. That was why they seemed to know each other so well—why she had sensed a closeness between them which could have sprung from no casual brief love-affair.

She was sitting there, almost numb with shock, when he came into the room. He raised his brows as if in surprise at finding her awake, but smiled and crossed over to kiss her. As he bent Corinna picked up Rochester’s lampoon and handed it to him. He paused, and his eyes narrowed quickly. Then he took it from her, straightened without kissing her and glanced over it so swiftly it was obvious he had already seen it, and tossed it onto the table beside the bed.