Two Bad Blue Eyes

Alone in her rooms in Paris, Lady Jean sits perplexing herself over ways and means. She is awfully in debt, even though she has let the country-house, and supplemented her income by another five hundred a year. She is angry with herself for having refused Sir Francis' assistance and too proud to call him to her side. She can think of no scheme by which to baffle Lauraine, and though she knows her rival is condemned to a species of exile, and that she is as unhappy as a woman can well be, that in no way comforts her for the fact of her own defeat.

Her position is full of peril and uncertainty. She can no longer float on the smooth waters of Society, for Society is shocked and outraged by her husband's misdeeds, and an ill odour clings to her name. The people she gathers round her now are not at all the class of people she prefers. Needy foreigners, second-rate celebrities; Englishmen with shady reputations and tarnished titles; French Bohemians who have known and admired her in the days of her success -- all these congregate together at her little rooms in the Rue Victoire; and among them all she looks for some willing tool who will lend himself to her hand and work out her schemes.