Then, as she approached forty, the freshness of her beauty began to fade. She had been too well known, and had to endure the fate of those who have long been talked about. Men said of her, "Mrs. Chepstow--oh, she's been going a deuce of a time. She must be well over fifty." Women--good women especially--pronounced her nearer sixty. Almost suddenly, as often happens in such cases as hers, the roseate hue faded from her life and a greyness began to fall over it.
She was seen about with very young men, almost boys. People sneered when they spoke of her. It was said that she was not so well off as she had been. Some shoddy millionaire had put her into a speculation. It had gone wrong, and he had not thought it necessary to pay up her losses. She moved from her house in Park Lane to a flat in Victoria Street, then to a little house in Kensington. Then she gave that up, and took a small place in the country, and motored up and down, to and from town. Then she got sick of that, and went to live in a London hotel. She sold her yacht. She sold a quantity of diamonds.
And people continued to say, "Mrs. Chepstow--oh, she must be well over fifty."
Undoubtedly she was face to face with a very bad period. With every month that passed, loneliness stared at her more fixedly, looked at her in the eyes till she began to feel almost dazed, almost hypnotized. A dulness crept over her.
Forty struck--forty-one--forty-two.
And then, one morning of June, Doctor Meyer Isaacson sat sipping his coffee and looking at her name, written against the time, five-thirty, in his book of consultations.