The Time of Roses by L.T. Meade

It is, alas! true in this world that often the machinations of the wicked prosper. By all the laws of morality Bertha Keys ought to have come to condign punishment; she ought to have gone under; she ought to have disappeared from society; she ought to have been hooted and disliked wherever she showed her face.

These things were by no means the case, however. Bertha, playing a daring game, once more achieved success.