lost all her money at Monte Carlo, and she has dyed her hair a nice straw colour; she looks fifteen years younger, I do assure you. Don is shooting in Dalmatia—of course she abuses him—poor old Don! I wonder how we should have got on if he had married me, as he wanted. Gwen told me Lord Derbyshire has run off with Mrs. Wheelskaitte—what he can see in her! And those open scandals are so stupid, where is the use of them? Surely you can do what you like without calling all the world in to see you doing it. When a woman has an easy husband she never need compromise herself, and Wheelskaitte certainly always was that. Oh, you never would know them, I remember, because they were new people; she was an odious creature and very ugly, but they gave very good parties in London, and their cottage was as nice a one as you could go to for Ascot. You used to like little Wroxeter, did not you? he was such a pretty boy—he has just left Eton, and he is wild to marry a girl out of a music-hall, so Gwen says. Those creatures get all the good marriages nowadays:—and two hundred débutantes waiting to be presented at the
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IN A WINTER CITY.
225
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