Mean as had been their conduct towards Mrs. Purling and her son, Phillipa and her husband were not to be classed with common adventurers of the ordinary type.  Born in a lower station, Gilly Jillingham might have taken honours as a “prig”; in his own with less luck he might have been an Ishmaelite generally shunned.  Phillipa also might have degenerated into a mere soured cackling hanger-on; but they were not pariahs by caste, but Brahmins, and entitled to all due honour so long as they floated on top of the wave.  Perhaps if near drowning no finger would have been outstretched to save; but there were plenty to pat them on the back as they disported themselves on the sound dry land.  Fair-weather friends and needy relatives rallied round their prosperity, of course; but they were also accepted as successful social facts by the whole of that great world which judges for the most part by appearances, being too idle or too much engrossed by folly to apply more accurate or searching tests.  In good society those who cared to talk twice of the matter blamed Harold; he was absent; besides, he had gone to the wall, therefore he must be in the wrong.  On the other hand, the Jillinghams deserved the triumph that is never denied success.  To Gilly prosperous were forgiven the sins of Gilly in social and moral rags.  If scandal like an evil gas had been let loose to crystallise upon Phillipa’s good name, the black stains could not adhere long to so charming a person, who made the Purling mansion in Berkeley Square one of the best-frequented and most fashionable in town.

There were many reasons why the Jillinghams should find their account in perpetual junketings.  Social excitement was as the breath in Gilly’s nostrils; notorious for profuse expenditure even when he was penniless, he was now absolutely reckless with money that was plentiful and moreover not his own.  Nor was the constant whirl of gaieties without its charm for Phillipa; it deadened conscience, and consoled in some measure for the neglect and indifference she soon encountered at her husband’s hands.  But the most potent reason was that it fooled Mrs. Purling to the top of her bent.  Self-satisfaction beamed upon her ample face as she found herself at length in constant intercourse and on a social equality—­as she thought—­with the potentates and powers and great ones of the earth.  Gilly Jillingham in the days of his apogee had been the spoiled favourite of more than one titled dame; his success must have been great, to measure it by the envy and hatred he evoked among his fellowmen—­even when in the cold shade there were duchesses who fought for him still; and now, when once more in full blossom, all his fair friends were ready to pet him as of old.  The form in which their kindness pleased him best—­because it was most to his advantage—­was in making much of Mrs. Purling.  Great people have the knack of putting those whom they patronise on the very best terms with themselves; and Mrs. Purling was so convinced of her success as a leader of fashion that she would have asked for a peerage in her own right, taking for arms three pills proper upon a silver field, if she could have been certain that these honours would not descend to her recreant son.