He is only a thing--no man at all--only a loathsome accident of animated decadence." He looked up quickly, amazed at her sudden bitterness; and she looked back at him almost fiercely.
"I may as well tell you what I've heard," she said; "I was not going to, at first; but it will be all around town sooner or later.

Rosamund told me.

She learned--as she manages to learn everything a little before anybody else hears of it--that Jack Ruthven found out that Alixe was behaving very carelessly with some man--some silly, callow, and probably harmless youth.

But there was a disgraceful scene on Mr.
Neergard's yacht, the _Niobrara_.

I don't know who the people were, but Ruthven acted abominably.