She, too, might have filled her letters to Australia with titles of nobility—­nobility of a firmer standing than the Countess and her friends could boast of—­had she been inclined to do so.  A baronial hall, dating from the Conquest—­a ducal castle, not to speak of a Royal Presence Chamber—­was nothing to Deborah Pennycuick after a while.

To see her on a crowded London staircase, laughing with a prince or a prime minister, was a common object of the season for a number of years; while varnishing days and first nights would have lacked charm for the society reporter who could not place her fine figure and her French gowns in his pictures of these scenes.  Goodwood and Cowes were familiar with her striking face and her expert interest in horses and yachts; Highland shooting-lodges, English hunting-fields, claimed her for their own.  Southern Europe, the Nile, Bayreuth—­in short, wherever social life was bright, comfortable and select, there she turned up promiscuous, as the spirit moved her, to be welcomed open-armed as a matter of course.  Men, young and old, continued to pay her homage, which was not just the sort of homage they paid to Frances; proposals of marriage were, or might have been if not nipped in the bud, almost as plentiful as invitations to country houses in the autumn.  And she relished it all with singular enjoyment—­until she began to feel the approach of that winter and evening of life which has so sharp a chill for those who have loved the sun.

Claud Dalzell was likewise a denizen of the great world that was hers and not Francie’s, and, close corporation as it is, they were never far off each other’s beat, seldom in ignorance of each other’s whereabouts.  At the same time, they also did not touch.  It was known throughout the great world, which is so small, that there was a deadly feud between them; and tactful hostesses took pains not to bring them into juxtaposition.  In public places, when meetings occurred by accident, only the most frigid bows were interchanged.

For, in quite early times, when the Australian heiress, as she was improperly styled, was taking London more or less by storm, she chanced to overhear a brief colloquy not intended for her ears.

“Who is that glorious woman that came in with the duchess?  I don’t see her just now, but she had a red frock on, with black lace over it—­ dark hair and diamond stars—­not half as bright and fine as her eyes, by Jove!”

“It must be Miss Pennycuick—­an Australian lady.  She is with the duchess’s party.”

“Oh, is that Miss Pennycuick?  Well, now I can believe what I’ve heard of her being so charming.  She carries it in her face.”

“She was charming—­until she came into her money.  That has quite spoilt her.”

It was Claud Dalzell who said it, and Deb heard him say it.  She moved off out of the press that had brought her within reach of his cold voice—­not to be mistaken by her for any other voice—­and she vowed through clenched teeth that never again would she come within that distance of him, if she could help it.