That was how they spoke of her story in the duchy's drawing-rooms; for what had Loveday been, at the most charitable count, but a young female-less humanly speaking, even a young person? And what was the spring of her mad crimes but folly, mere weak, feminine folly? Even an improper motive-one of those over-powering passions one reads about rather surreptitiously in the delightful works of that dear, naughty, departed Lord Byron-would have been somehow more ... more ... satisfactory.