I found her an agreeable companion.
She was one of those blessed persons who say quite fearlessly what they think (thus saving much useful time), and she had a ready wit.
She was always willing to talk (with a diverting humour) of her lurid past.
Her conversation, though uninstructed, was good, because, notwithstanding everything, she was an honest woman.
Then she did a very surprising thing.
At the age of forty, she married a boy of twenty-one.
Her friends said it was the maddest act of all her life, and some who had stuck to her through thick and thin, now for the boy’s sake, because he was nice and it seemed shameful thus to take advantage of his inexperience, refused to have anything more to do with her.
It really was the limit.
They prophesied disaster, for Elizabeth Vermont was incapable of sticking to any man for more than six months, nay, they hoped for it, since it seemed the only chance for the wretched youth that his wife should behave so scandalously that he must leave her.
They were all wrong.
I do not know whether time was responsible for a change of heart in her, or whether Peter Vermont’s innocence and simple love touched her, but the fact remains that she made him an admirable wife.
They were poor, and she was extravagant, but she became a thrifty housewife; she grew on a sudden so careful of her reputation that the tongue of scandal was silenced.
His happiness seemed her only concern.
No one could doubt that she loved him devotedly.
After being the subject of so much conversation for so long Elizabeth Vermont ceased to be talked about.
It looked as though her story were told.
She was a changed woman, and I amused myself with the notion that when she was a very old lady, with many years of perfect respectability behind her, the past, the lurid past, would seem to belong not to her but to someone long since dead whom once she had vaguely known.
For women have an enviable faculty of forgetting.
But who can tell what the fates have in store?
In the twinkling of an eye all was changed.
Peter Vermont, after ten years of an ideal marriage, fell madly in love with a girl called Barbara Canton. She was a nice girl, the youngest daughter of Lord Robert Canton who was at one time Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and she was pretty in a fair and fluffy way.
Of course she was not for a moment to be compared with Lady Elizabeth.
Many people knew what had happened, but no one could tell whether Elizabeth Vermont had any inkling of it, and they wondered how she would meet a situation that was so foreign to her experience.
It was always she who had discarded her lovers; none had deserted her.
For my part I thought she would make short work of little Miss Canton; I knew her courage and her adroitness.
All this was in my mind now while we chatted over our luncheon.
There was nothing in her demeanour, as gay, charming, and frank as usual, to suggest that anything troubled her.
She talked as she always talked, lightly but with good sense and a lively perception of the ridiculous, of the various topics which the course of conversation brought forward.
I enjoyed myself.
I came to the conclusion that by some miracle she had no notion of Peter’s changed feelings, and I explained this to myself by the supposition that her love for him was so great, she could not conceive that his for her might be less.
We drank our coffee and smoked a couple of cigarettes, and she asked me the time.
“A quarter to three.”
“I must ask for my bill.”
“Won’t you let me stand you lunch?”
“Of course,” she smiled.
“Are you in a hurry?”
“I’m meeting Peter at three.”
“Oh, how is he?”
“He’s very well.”
She gave a little smile, that tardy and delightful smile of hers, but I seemed to discern in it a certain mockery.
For an instant she hesitated and she looked at me with deliberation.
“You like curious situations, don’t you?” she said.
“You’d never guess the errand I’m bound on.
I rang up Peter this morning and asked him to meet me at three.
I’m going to ask him to divorce me.”
“You’re not,” I cried.
I felt myself flush and did not know what to say.
“I thought you got on so well together.”
“Do you think it’s likely that I shouldn’t know what all the world knows?
I’m really not such a fool as all that.”