Lady Denyer was not the less serious-minded because she was seen at every aristocratic resort, and wore low gowns with very short sleeves, and a great display of mottled arm and dimpled elbow.
Now came her ladyship's smiling signal for the withdrawal of that fairer half of the assembly which was supposed to be indifferent to Lord Denyer's famous port and Madeira.

She had been throwing out her gracious signals unperceived for at least five minutes before Lady Maulevrier responded, so entirely was that lady absorbed in her conversation with Lord Denyer; but she caught the look at last, and rose, as if moved by the same machinery which impelled her hostess, and then, graceful as a swan sailing with the current, she drifted down the room to the distant door, and headed the stately procession of matronly velvet and diamonds, herself at once the most regal and the most graceful figure in that bevy of fair woman.
In the drawing-room nobody could be gayer than Lady Maulevrier, as she marked the time of Signor Paponizzi's saltarello, exquisitely performed on the Signor's famed Amati violin--or talked of the latest scandal--always excepting that latest scandal of all which involved her own husband--in subdued murmurs with one of her intimates.

In the dining-room the men drew closer together over their wine, and tore Lord Maulevrier's character to rags.

Yea, they rent him with their teeth and gnawed the flesh from his bones, until there was not so much left of him as the dogs left of Jezebel.
He had been a scamp from his cradle, a spendthrift at Eton and Oxford, a blackleg in his manhood.

False to men, false to women.