To her husband, she represented Mrs. Strangeways as a very pleasant woman with a passion for all the arts; formerly wife of a painter, and now married to a wealthy man who shared her tastes.  This satisfied Harvey; but Alma had not deceived herself, and could not be quite comfortable with Mrs. Strangeways.  She no longer puzzled over the flow of guests to the house in Porchester Terrace, having discovered not only that most of these were people, as Sibyl said, of no account, who had few houses open to them, but that several would not be admitted to any circle of scrupulous respectability.  The fact was that Mrs. Strangeways largely entertained the demi-monde, to use in its true sense a term persistently misapplied.  Not impossibly she thought the daughter of Bennet Frothingham might, from one point of view, be included among such persons; on the other hand, her warmth proved that she regarded Mrs Rolfe as a social acquisition, if indeed she was not genuinely attracted to her.  What circumstances had led, or forced, Mrs. Strangeways into this peculiar position, Alma could not discover; it might be simply one result of an unfortunate marriage, for undoubtedly there was something sinister in the husband, a coarseness varnished with sham geniality, which made Alma dislike to be near him.  In the woman herself she found little that was objectionable; her foolish effusiveness, and her artificial complexion, seemed to indicate merely a weak character; at times her talk was interesting, and she knew many people of a class superior to that represented in her drawing-room.  But for the illumination she had received, Alma would have felt surprised at meeting Cyrus Redgrave in these assemblies; formerly she had thought of him as belonging to a sphere somewhat above her own, a quasi-aristocratic world, in which Sibyl Carnaby, the daughter of Mrs. Ascott Larkfield, also moved by right of birth and breeding.  Sibyl, however, was not above accepting Mrs. Strangeways’ invitations, though she continued to speak of her slightingly; and Redgrave had known the lady for a long time —­ even, it appeared, before her first marriage.

In a year’s time Alma had made and renewed a large number of acquaintances.  She spoke of herself as living ‘in the country’, and still professed a dislike of mere gaiety, a resolve to maintain her simple, serious mode of existence.  At half-an-hour’s journey from town, she was protected against the time-wasting intrusion of five-o’clock babblers; a luncheon or two in the season, and a modest dinner at long intervals, would discharge her social liabilities; and she had the precious advantage of being able to use London for all legitimate purposes, without danger of being drawn into the vortex of its idle temptations.  Once more she was working earnestly at her music —­ much, it seemed, to Harvey’s satisfaction.  He wanted her to go on also with water-colours, but she pointed out to him that one art was all she had time for.