Lady Delacour’s rapidly declining physical condition is brought to a head when she is involved in a carriage accident. Taking out a new carriage equipage, bought on borrowed money to show off to her neighbors, Lady Delacour is caught beneath the carriage when it flips over in the park. Rushed back to her chambers, she refuses any medical help, certain that her cancerous gunshot wound will be discovered. She pretends to her attentive maid, Marriott, that she is fine. Ever obedient to her lady, Marriott refuses Lord Delacour’s demand to be allowed into the bedchamber. Belinda, who already knows about the duel and about Lady Delacour’s fears that the wound has turned cancerous, is concerned over Lady Delacour’s condition. She stays up all night at the woman’s bedside. She urges the woman, now in nearly constant pain, to consult a reputable doctor known for his sagacity and his erudition, identified only as Doctor X.

Hervey’s friends, angered that he abandoned them so completely after the near-death episode at the Serpentine River, now conspire to damage their ex-friend’s reputation by circulating the vile rumor that Hervey has long and secretly kept a mysterious woman named Virginia St. Pierre as his mistress at his estate at Windsor, far from prying eyes.