Chapter 24

Sir John Oxon Returns Also

When his Grace of Osmonde returned to town he found but one topic of
conversation, and this was of such interest and gave such a fillip to
gossip and chatter that fierce Sarah of Marlborough's encounters with
Mrs. Masham, and her quarrels with Majesty itself, were for the time
actually neglected. Her Grace had engaged in battles royal for so long
a time and with such activity that the Court and the world were a
little wearied and glad of something new. And here was a most promising
event which might be discussed from a thousand points and bring forth
pretty stories of past and present, as well as prophecies for the
future.

The incomparable and amazing Clorinda, Countess of Dunstanwolde, having
mourned in stately retirement for near upon two years (when Fashion
demanded but one) and having paid such reverence to her old lord's
memory as had seemed almost the building of a monument to his virtues,
had cast her sables, left the country, and come up to town to reign
again at Dunstanwolde House, which had been swept and garnished.

At Court, and in all the modish houses in the town, one may be sure
that the whole story of her strange life was told and retold with a
score of imaginative touches. Her baby oaths were resworn, her childish
wickedness depicted in colours which glowed, the biographies of the
rough old country rakes who had trained her were related, in free
translation, so to speak, over many a dish of chocolate and tea, and,
these points dwelt on, what more dramatic than to turn upon the
singular fortune of her marriage, the wealth, rank, and reputation of
the man who had so worshipped her, and the unexpectedness of her grace
and decorum the while she bore his name and shared his home with him.

"Had she come up to town," 'twas remarked, "and once having caught him,
played the vixen and the shrew, turned his house into a bear-garden,
behaved unseemly and put him to shame, none would have been
surprised----"

"Many would have been all agog with joy," interrupted old Lady Storms
who heard. "She was a woeful disappointment to many a gossiping woman,
and a lesson to all the shifty fools who sell themselves to a man, and
then trick him out of the price he paid."

At the clubs and coffee-houses the men talked also, though men's
tongues do not run as fast as the tongues of womenkind, and their
gossip was of a masculine order. She was a finer creature than ever,
and at present was the richest widow in England. A man might well lose
his wits over her mere self if she had naught but the gown she stood
in, but he who got her would get all else beside. The new beaux and the
old ones began to buy modish habits and