The Salt Of The Earth by Fred M. White

In her mind's eye Adela plainly pictured the denouement. She could almost pick out the phrases in which the paragraphists would describe the scandal. It was only a question of when the blow should fall. A score of people present would be only too pleased to pass on and retail the delicious morsel for the benefit of other frivolities who lived mainly for bridge and tale-bearing.

Well, if she had got to go through it she would know how to behave; it would be better so, than continue the horrid masquerade of being a woman of wealth and fashion when she was nothing but a penniless adventuress. With an easy smile on her face, she sat calm and collected, waiting on events. She had done nothing wrong thus far, and would be an object of pity rather than of scorn and blame; but if she allowed the opportunity of disclosure to pass, she would then deserve all that fate might have in store for her. The people round her were mostly supposed to be her friends; she saw them in a kind of mist, a dreamy tangle of gleaming arms and shoulders, of glittering jewels, of draperies light and frothy, as sea foam on an August morning. She wondered how much longer her environment would consist of shaded lights and feathery palms and ferns, priceless pictures and rare carpets from the Far East. It would be, perhaps, better to cut it short there and then, and take to an honest, if monotonous livelihood. Then the tangle straightened itself out again, and Adela was herself once more.