The President sat on the lawn of Government House reading from a sheaf of cablegrams to a group of interested guests. In this fashion came daily to St. Kitts the important news of the world; after submission to the President, it was nailed on the court-house door, and then printed in a leaflet, called by courtesy a newspaper. If it arrived when the President was entertaining, he always read it to his guests, and the little scene was one of the most primitive and picturesque in that land of contradictions and surprises. Far removed from the barbarism of utter discomfort, with rigid social laws, and a proud and dignified aristocracy, these smaller islands of the English groups are equally innocent of the comforts and luxuries of modern civilization.
Behind the house a party of young people had not interrupted their game of croquet, and Julia, who was taking her first lesson, was as oblivious to the news of the great world she so longed to enter as to the prospect of marrying a man who was mercifully absent.
Two of the group about the President’s chair also disengaged themselves as soon as the reading finished, instead of lingering to comment. One was Mrs. Edis, always indifferent to mundane affairs, and the other Captain Dundas, who saw his opportunity to have a few words alone with the mother of Julia. He had made up his mind to speak, and was the man to find his chance if one failed to present itself. He led her to a chair under a palm, whose leaves spread just above her head when seated, and she was glad of the shade and rest. The Captain took a chair opposite. He would have liked to smoke, but dared not ask permission of a woman whose skirts had been made to wear over a crinoline. However, he was quite capable of arriving at the sticking point without the friendly aid of tobacco. Having the direct mind of his profession, he began abruptly: —
“Madam, there’s something I’ve got to say, and I may as well get it out. France” (he utterly disregarded the menacing glitter in the eyes opposite) “means to marry your daughter, and I mean that he shan’t. If you don’t listen to me here” (Mrs. Edis was planting her stick), “I’ll say it before the whole company.”
Mrs. Edis sat back. The Captain went on, breathing more deeply. “It’s all very well for you to say that you know the world, Mrs. Edis, because you have seen a few dissipated men and unfaithful husbands. The Harold Frances haven’t come into your ken. Only the high civilizations breed them. There are plenty like him, not only in England, but in Europe and the new United States of America. They are responsible for some of the unhappiest women in the world, perhaps for the revolt of woman against man. It isn’t only that they are petty but absolute tyrants in the home; clever women can always circumvent that sort; but they’re the kind that debase their wives, treating them like mistresses, to whom nothing exists in the world but sex, and as they are vilely blasé, the sort of sex which is but the scientific term for love has long since been forgotten by them, if they ever knew it. Many are born old, perverted by too much ancestral indulgence. All sorts of books are being written to protect the poor girl from the seducer, or the man who would sell her into the life of the underworld; it seems to me it is time some one should start a crusade in behalf of the well-born, the delicately nurtured, the women with inherited brains who might be of some use in the world if not broken or hardened by the roués they marry. Mind you, I’m no silly old saint. I’m not inveighing against the young blood who sows a few wild oats; I’m after the scalp, as the Americans say, of the thousands in the upper classes that are bad all through, like Harold France, and who’ll get worse every day of their lives. Do you follow me, ma’am?”
“I don’t think I do. The whole subject is one which I have never discussed with any man, and is deeply repugnant to me, but as my child’s happiness is at stake, I waive my own feelings. Please go into details. Just what do you mean?”
The Captain gasped. “I—well—I—can’t do that exactly, you know,” he stammered, wiping his face with his large red silk handkerchief. “But—you see, the bad women—and men—of the great capitals of the earth—have taught these young bloods too much. Some it don’t hurt. There’s plenty of good men in the upper world, even when they have been a bit wild in their youth; but men like France—with a rotten spot in the brain —”
The old lady sat erect. “Do you mean to say that France is insane?”
Here was the Captain’s opportunity. But, after the mental confusion of the night of the ball, not only was he disposed to question what had seemed at the moment a flash of illumination, but he knew the pickle awaiting him if he accused a man in France’s position of insanity. He was risking much as it was; he was not brave enough for more. He had his own and his family’s interests to consider. A suit for slander would relegate him to private life, unhonored either as admiral or knight. His wife desired passionately to be addressed by servants and other inferiors as “my lady.”
“Well—no—I can’t say that—”
“I ask you to answer me yes or no. Have you ever seen Mr. France do anything which leads you to believe him a lunatic—for that, I infer, is what you mean by a rotten spot. And if you have, why, may I ask, have you been so insensible to your duty as to permit him to remain in the navy?”
“Oh, I assure you, madam, you misunderstand. A man may have a rotten spot in his brain, which will make him a horror to live with, and yet be as sane as you or I.”
Mrs. Edis leaned back. “You have described to me a man precisely like my husband. He drank too much, he thought too much of love-making when he was young, but he got over it. I, as a dutiful wife, resigned myself. That, I fancy, is the history of nine out of ten wives. After all, we have a great many other things to attend to. Husbands soon become an incident.”
“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” The Captain cast about desperately in his mind. Meanwhile Mrs. Edis also was thinking rapidly. Such fears as he may have excited having been laid, she reverted to her original purpose to hoodwink him.
She sat erect with one of her abrupt movements and brought her cane down into the gravel. “In a way you are right!” she said harshly. “Men! I hate the lot of them. After all, why should my girl marry now? If she and France want to marry, let them try the experiment of a long engagement—two years, at least. I will talk to him—put him on probation. Let him resign from the navy when he returns to England and settle down here under my eye.”
“Good! Good!” exclaimed the Captain, who knew that France would never return.
“During this visit, I’ll probe him, watch him with my girl. If I don’t approve of him, I’ll ask you to keep him—on board until you leave. In any case, he shall consent to an engagement of two years. Will you assist me?”
“Certainly, ma’am, certainly.”
And so the fate of Julia France was sealed.
London once a year has a brief spell of youth, during which she is surpassingly beautiful, gay, insolent, and very nearly as vivid and riotous as the tropics. Her gray besooted old masses of architecture are but the background for green parks where swans sail on slowly moving streams; thousands of window boxes, flaunting red, white, and yellow; miles of plate-glass windows, whose splendid display, whether torn from the earth, or representing unthinkable toil at the loom, the rape of the feathered tribe, or countless brains no longer laid out in cells but in intricate patterns of lace, hot veldts where the ostrich, quite indifferent to the depletion of his tail, walks as absurdly as the pupil of Delsarte, slaughter-houses of hideless beasts, compensated in death with silver and gold, the ravishing of greenhouses, and the luscious fruits that grow only between earth and glass,—all these wonders lining curved streets and crowded “circuses,” challenge the coldest eye above the tightest purse. And in the fashionable streets during the morning are women as pretty and gay of attire as the flower beds in the Park, where they display themselves of an afternoon.
Julia, happy in her own unsullied eager youth, made the acquaintance of London when that seasoned old dame was taking her yearly elixir of life, and thought herself come to Paradise. She had hardly a word for her aunt, Mrs. Winstone, who had met her at the railway station, but twisted her neck to look at the shop windows, the hoary old palaces and churches, the passing troops of cavalry, gorgeous as exotics, the monuments to heroes, the bare-kneed Scot in his kilt, and the Oriental in his turban. It was Mrs. Winstone’s hour for driving, and as her young guest’s frock had not been made for Hyde Park, and Julia had laughed when asked if she were tired, the constitutional was taken through the streets and in or about the smaller parks. The coachman was far too haughty himself to venture beyond the West End, or even to skirt those purlieus which lie at its back doors.
Julia’s eyes, wide and star-like as they were, missed not a detail, and she felt as happy as on the night of her first party. The journey had been monotonous, the passengers, when not ill, rather dull. Therefore was her plastic mind shaped to drink down in great draughts the pleasures promised by the city of her dreams. Moreover, never in her life had she felt so well. The eighteen days at sea, the wholesome food, the constant exercise in which a good sailor always indulges, if only to get away with the time, long days in cold salt air, had crimsoned her blood, vitalized every organ. France and the reason of her translation to London she had almost forgotten. There had been a hurried marriage at Great House; then, almost before the wine had been tasted, the indignant bridegroom had been summoned to his ship, which, with the rest of the squadron, had sailed two hours later. There had been a succession of infuriated letters, mailed at the different islands, and Julia knew that France intended to leave the service as soon as he set foot in England; but as that could not be for weeks to come, she had dismissed him from her mind.
“Shall I live here?” she asked at length, as they drove down the wide Mall, one of the finest avenues in Christendom, and half rising to look at Buckingham Palace.
“You should know.” Mrs. Winstone had received only a cablegram from her sister. “France has a house, a bit of a place in Hertfordshire, but only rooms in town, so far as I know. The duke, however, may ask you to stop with him in St. James’s Square—for a bit. He seems enchanted to get France married, but it is rather fortunate that I have known him for years and can vouch for you. France, returning with a bride from the antipodes—well —”
“Of course the duke would expect some one much older, Mr. France is so old himself. But I’m glad he doesn’t mind, for I want to live in castles. It’s too bad Mr. France hasn’t one.”
“Is that what you married France for? I have wondered.”
Julia shrugged her restless young shoulders, and looked at the carriages full of finery rolling between the columns of Hyde Park.
“Mother told me to marry him and I did, of course. I have known, ever since I was about eight, that I was to marry at this time and start upon some wonderful career, for there’s no getting the best of the planets. I had to take the man who came along at the right moment.”
Mrs. Winstone was one of those extremely smart English women who put on an expression of youthful vacuity with their public toilettes, but at this point she so far forgot herself as to sit up and gasp.
“Not that old nonsense! You don’t mean to tell me that Jane still believes—why, I had forgotten the thing. Hinson! Home!”
As the carriage turned and rolled toward Tilney Street Mrs. Winstone, really interested for the first time, stared hard at the face beside her. Had she a child on her hands? It had been rather a bore, the prospect of fitting out and putting through her preliminary paces a young West Indian bride, mooning the while for an absent groom. But she had never seen any one look less like a bride, more heart-whole.
“Do you love France?” she asked abruptly.
“Of course not. He’s a horrid funny old thing, and his eyes look like glass when they don’t look like Fawcett’s when he’s been drinking, poor darling. And some of his hair is gray. But of course he’ll die soon and then I’ll have a handsome young husband.”
Mrs. Winstone regarded the tip of her boot. She was worldly, selfish, vain, envied this young relative who would one day be a duchess, but she had an abundant store of that good nature which is the brass but pleasant counterfeit of a kind heart. She would not put herself out for any one, unless there were amusement or profit in it for her pampered self, but she would do so much if there were, that she had the reputation of being one of the “nicest women in London.” It was a long time—she was a widow of thirty-four, and enjoyed a comfortable income—since she had felt a spasm of natural sympathy, but she put this sensation to her credit as she turned again to the child beside her.
“I wish I had gone down to Nevis last year, as I half intended,” she remarked. “It would have been good for my nerves, too. But there is such a vast difference between the ages of your mother and myself—we are at the opposite ends of a good old West Indian family—and we don’t get on very well. If I had—tell me about the wedding. I suppose it was a great affair. Where did you go for the honeymoon?”
“No, I didn’t have a fine wedding. One day Mr. France was just calling, when the minister of Fig Tree Church was also there, and mother told us to stand up and be married. A few minutes after a sailor came running up with an order from the Captain to Mr. France to go to the ship at once. Before he had a chance to return the squadron sailed. For some reason the Captain didn’t want us to marry, and mother was delighted at getting the best of him. I never knew her to be in such a good humor as she was all the rest of that day and the next. But the Captain must have been as cross as Mr. France when he found out he was too late. Mother and the planets are too much for anybody.”
Mrs. Winstone had learned all she wished to know. Mrs. Edis would have been wholly—no doubt satirically—content with the resolution born instantly in her sister’s agile mind. France would not arrive for a month or six weeks. There was nothing for it but to make his bride so worldly and frivolous that some of this appalling innocence would disappear in the process. Mrs. Winstone did not take kindly to the task, being fastidious and tolerably decent, but having read the book of life by artificial light for many years, could arrive at no other solution of her problem.
“France has been cabling frantically to be relieved, has even sent his resignation, but either there is no one to take his place on such short notice, or some one is exerting a counter-influence—possibly your good friend, the Captain—and he must wait until the squadron returns. Meanwhile, we shall not let you miss him. The duke has sent me a check for your trousseau, and this is the very height of the season—here we are. It is a box, but I hope you will not be uncomfortable.”
Among other considerations, Mrs. Winstone did not permit herself to forget that now was her opportunity to ingratiate herself with a future peeress of Britain. “Although anything less like a duchess,” she thought grimly as she laid her arm lightly about Julia’s waist while ascending the stair, “I never saw out of America or on the stage. But the duke, good soul, will be delighted.”
The house, small, like so many in Mayfair, was all drawing-room on the first floor, a right angle of a room, so shaped and furnished as to give it an air of spaciousness. The front window was open to the flower boxes; there was a narrow conservatory across the back, which added to its depth. Above were one large bedroom and two small ones; and those of the servants, a flight higher, were a disgrace to civilization.
But all that was intended for polite eyes presented a picture of ease, luxury, taste, smartness; moreover, had the unattainable air of having been occupied for several generations. Americans and other outsiders, settling for a season or two in London, spend thousands of pounds to look as if living in a packing-case of expensive goods, but Englishwomen of moderate income, combined with traditions and certain inheritances, often give the impression of aristocratic wealth and luxury.
Captain Winstone (recruited also from the generous navy) had inherited the house in Tilney Street from his mother, an old dame of taste and fashion, who, besides careful weeding in the possessions of her ancestors, had travelled much and bought with a fine discrimination that was a part of her hardy contempt for Victorian fashions. The house, with three thousand pounds a year, was Mrs. Winstone’s for so long as she should grace this planet, and enabled her to exist, even to pay her dressmakers on account, when they made nuisances of themselves. But although she would have liked a great income, she had never been tempted to marry again, holding that a widow who sacrificed her liberties for anything less than a peerage was a fool; and no peer had crossed her path wealthy enough to be disinterested, or poor enough to share her humble dowry with gratitude. She always carried on a mild flirtation with a tame cat a few years younger than herself, who would fetch and carry, and, if wealthy, make her nice presents. If not, she fed him and took him to drive in her Victoria. Her heart and passions never troubled her, but her vanity required constant sustenance. She did not in the least mind the implication when the infant-in-waiting was invited to the country houses she visited; not only was her vanity flattered, but the generous tolerance of her world always amused her. She lived on the surface of life, and altogether was an enviable woman.
Julia was delighted with her little room, done up in fresh chintz, too absorbed and happy to notice that it overlooked a mews. A four-wheeler had already brought her box, and a maid had unpacked her modest wardrobe. Mrs. Winstone, glancing over it with a suppressed sigh, told her to put on something white, as people would drop in for tea, then retired to the large front bedroom to be arrayed in a tea-gown of pink chiffon and much French lace.
Mrs. Winstone, an excessively pretty woman, with blue eyes and fair hair, and a fresh complexion responsive to the arts of rejuvenation, seated herself before the tea-table and arranged her expression, determined not to betray her feelings when Julia entered in a white muslin frock made by the seamstress of Nevis. But as Julia, with all the confidence of an only child (such had practically been her position), entered smiling, her hair pinned softly about her head, Mrs. Winstone’s own spontaneous smile, which did so much for her popularity, without seaming the satin of her skin, responded. She saw at once what had dawned upon even Mrs. Edis’s provincial and scientific mind, that the girl at least knew how to put on her clothes, that she could wear white muslin and a blue sash and neck ribbon with an air.
“We shall have jolly times with the shops and dressmakers,” she said warmly. “We’ll begin to-morrow morning. You are to be presented at the last drawing-room and must go into training at once. The duke wishes it. Really, I didn’t think there’d be anything so excitin’ this season as puttin’ the wife of Harold France through her paces. How do, Algy?”
She extended a finger to a young man who lounged in with a bored expression, and a dragging of one foot after the other that suggested excesses which were preparing him for an early grave; in truth, he was a virtuous and timid younger son, who, being able to afford but one vice, chose cigarettes, and in the privacy of his room—he lived at home—smoked the economical American.
Mrs. Winstone, with the vagueness of her kind, murmured, “my niece,” and poured him out a cup of tea, while embarking smartly upon a tide of gossip anent “Sonnys” and “Berties,” “Mollys” and “Vickys,” to which Julia had no key. But she was quite content to be ignored, being entirely happy, and deeply interested in her aunt and her new surroundings. With a quick and appreciative instinct she admired the rectangular room with its soft light and French furniture, its hundred little treasures from India and the continent. The tea-service was fairylike, compared with the massive pieces of Great House, and eminently in harmony with the pretty butterfly and her slender fluttering hands. Mrs. Winstone, as has been intimated, cultivated an expression of complete ingenuousness, even in animated conversation, and in repose—as when driving alone, for instance—looked so drained of vulgar sensations, of that capacity for thought so necessary to the middle classes, poor dears, that even an Englishman was once heard to exclaim that he would like to throw a wet sponge at her. Her figure might have been taller, but it could hardly have been thinner, and carried smart gowns as an angel carries her natural feathers. Women liked her, not only for the reasons given, but because her acute intelligence chose that they should, and men liked, sometimes loved, her because she knew them as well as she did women, and managed them accordingly.
Her present adorer, Lord Algernon FitzMiff, was tall, loose-jointed, with sleek brown hair, a mathematical profile, and beautiful clothes. He would never pay his tailor; never, unless he caught an heiress, own a thousand pounds. But at least a Chinaman on his first visit to England would never have taken him for a member of the middle class; and when a man is no disgrace to “his order,” who shall maintain that his life is wasted?
Julia, finding him even less interesting than her husband, was on the other side of the room admiring an old bronze brought to England in the palmy days of the East India Company, when three visitors were announced: —
“Mrs. Macmanus, Mr. Pirie, Mr. Nigel Herbert.”
“Dear Julia!” cried Mrs. Winstone, in a tone which, although subdued, made an effect of floating across space until the drawing-room seemed immense, “come and meet my friends.”
Julia, born without mauvaise honte, passed the ordeal of introduction in a fashion which delighted her aunt, and sat down under the lorgnette of Mrs. Macmanus.
This intimate friend of Mrs. Winstone was also in her thirty-fifth year, but enormously rich, as lazy of body as she was quick of mind, and, inclined to gout, quite indifferent to both youth and clothes. Her black frock would not have been worn by her maid, her stays were of the old school, her hair was parted, and about her eyes were many amiable lines. There were those who maintained that she was a snob of the subtlest dye, daring to look like a frump because of her income and her ramifications in the peerage; but they were quite wrong. Mrs. Macmanus was so little of a snob that she rarely recognized snobbery in others, hated every variety of discomfort, and could not have been more amiable and kind-hearted had she been poor and a nobody.
Mr. Pirie, although only forty-five, was already an old beau. Left with an income sufficient for a luxurious bachelor, too selfish to ask the present Mrs. Macmanus to share it when she was a penniless girl, and with none of the recommendations essential to the capture of predatory heiresses, he had lived for twenty-five years in very comfortable rooms in Jermyn Street, dining out every night during the season, taking his yearly waters at Carlsbad, visiting at country houses. In no way distinguished, people wondered sometimes why they continued, year after year, to invite him; but he had been astute enough to hang on until he had become a fixed habit, and now, should any of the ailments which come from too much dining with owners of chefs take him off, he would have been sincerely missed for a season; he was a good-natured gossip, who could put vitriol on his tongue at the unique moment. Mrs. Macmanus had been free for fifteen years, and he had proposed to her fifteen times; but not only was that astute widow content with her present state, but she never quite forgave him for not proposing before he was obliged to wear a toupee. She liked him, however, and gave him a corner at her fireside. For several years she had tried to make him work, being of that order of woman that has no patience with the idler. In her youth, she had been quite impassioned on the subject, but had learned that to backbone the invertebrate was as easy as to turn marble into flesh. When, a few years later, the Americans discovered the hookworm, she concluded that half England had it, and became entirely charitable.
Young Herbert, who immediately carried his tea over to Julia’s side, was but recently out of Oxford, reading law to please his father (an eminently practical peer), but quietly preparing himself for literature. He had a fresh frank face, which refused to look politely bored, large blue eyes, that danced at times with youth and the zest of life, and although dressed with the perfection of detail of a Lord Algy FitzMiff, his movements, like his voice, were often quick and eager. He had been cultivating Mrs. Winstone with a view to succeeding Lord Algy, since she was so much the fashion, and rippin’ besides, but she vanished from his calculations the moment he set eyes on her niece, and never returned.
He had heard nothing of the marriage, Mrs. Winstone with fashionable casualness having omitted to mention it, and society being as indifferent to the performances of a man who spent his leaves of absence in Paris, as to the heir presumptive of an unfashionable duke.
“Miss France—surely—” he began. But Julia bridled. She was proud of her married state. She sat up very straight and looked at him primly.
He laughed aloud. “Really?” he asked teasingly. “Well, I suppose you are too young to like to be told you look so, but—I can’t take it in. Do I know your husband, perhaps? France—there are several. You are a bride, of course.”
“I have been married just twenty-four days. My husband is a lieutenant in the navy. He won’t be here for a month or two yet —”
“In the navy—what—what—is his first name?”
“Harold. He has a lot of others, but I forget them.”
“Not the Duke of Kingsborough’s —”
“Yes, and Aunt Maria says perhaps I shall stay at some of the castles this year.”
Herbert’s hand shook so that he was obliged to put down his cup. He was almost a generation younger than France, and rarely entered his own club, but there are some characters that are known to all men of their class, however unpopular or negligible socially they may be. Herbert felt a sensation of nausea, and for the moment loathed this wonderful young creature that looked to be composed of light and fire. What must she really be made of to have fallen in love with a man like France? What sort of hideous inherited instincts had answered those of a man that did not even possess the common gift of magnetism? What had he made of her?
He had been bred in the severe school of his class. His composure returned and he looked at her critically. Red hair. A sensual and ill-tempered little devil, no doubt. Then he encountered her eyes, eyes so unmistakably innocent, so different from the eyes of the Mrs. Winstones, with their manufactured ingenuousness, their injected wonder at the naughtiness of the world.
But he floundered. “Oh, of course. Castles. And of course, Mr. France is very handsome—distinguished.”
Julia was staring at him in open astonishment. “Handsome? He looks like a sheep, when he doesn’t look like a calf—that’s the way he looked when he stared at me while mother was talking to him. I had never talked to a man in my life. He must have thought me quite stupid. I am sure he was very kind to marry me.”
“Kind?”
“Mother said he was in love, but somehow—well, I have only read a few of Scott’s novels—he doesn’t seem much like a lover to me. But after I’ve seen the world a bit, and read some modern novels, perhaps I shall understand Mr. France better. I should think it would be a good thing to understand one’s husband.”
“Rather.” He was devoured with curiosity, and changed the subject hastily. “What is your idea of a man that could make love, fall in love?” he asked, not yet quite sure whether he liked her well enough even for a mild flirtation.
But Julia had liked him spontaneously. His youth, his breeding, his frank kind eyes, the mere fact that he was the first man near her own age with whom she had ever had a tête-à-tête, won her confidence, and fluttered her imagination. She regarded him dispassionately.
“You, I should think. But I don’t know very much—anything about it.”
Was this accomplished coquetry? But those eyes. “Will you tell me where you have come from?” he asked. “I—I can’t quite place you.”
“From Nevis, where Aunt Maria was born.”
“And there are no men there?”
“No young ones. I met Mr. France at my first party, anyhow. I had no friends—not even girls. My mother is peculiar—a very wonderful woman. Some day I’ll tell you about her. But she made up her mind I was to have no friends until I married.”
Herbert made another heroic attempt to repress his curiosity. “And why do you think I could fall in love—really in love?”
“Well—you see—you look elastic, springy, waxy, sappy, like the young trees. Mr. France is all made, hard, finished. He’s like an old tree with rough bark, and dry inside. I suppose he could love when he was your age, but he’s years too old now. I shall always think of him as a father—my father had a son eighteen years old when he was Mr. France’s age—and I was eighteen my last birthday.”
Herbert drew a long breath. He put his finger inside his collar and shot a glance at the rest of the party. They were discussing the resignation of Gladstone and his indictment of the peers; English people, no matter how frivolous, are never as empty-headed as Americans of the same class. Moreover, Mrs. Winstone included several flirtations in the curriculum, and looked upon Herbert as quite safe.
The question popped out irresistibly. “Then your mother arranged the match?”
“Of course.”
“And—and—you aren’t in love with your husband now that you’re married to him? Girls often are, you know.”
“What difference does that make?”
“Well—I should think France would know how to make love even if he couldn’t love—I fancy you’ve hit him off there.”
“Well, he may, but I hope he won’t. Forty! He used to talk a good deal about wanting to settle down. So, I suppose he’ll do that, and I am sure I could run a house as well as mother.”
“Run a house! Is that the way he made love to you?”
“He never made love to me. Mother always entertained him, and he had to sail as soon as the ceremony was over, instead of taking me up into the hills, as he had planned.”
Herbert felt a wild sense of exultation and an equally wild impulse to save her. The finest type of young Englishman inherits a deep and passionate tide of chivalry, and his was whipped hard and high for the first time. A crime had been committed, a worse one menaced; this he would avert if he had to elope with the child and ruin his career. There was no room left in him for humor; it was the best plan he could think of, just as Mrs. Winstone’s plan to make her innocent little niece so frivolous, worldly, and sophisticated that in a measure she would be prepared for life with one of the most blatant roués in England, was the best her order of brain could evolve. And Julia, plastic, unawakened, inexperienced, gave the impression of being entirely agreeable to any plans that might be made for her.
Herbert, young and chivalrous as he might be, and still able to fall in love at first sight, was the product of the highest civilization on earth, and in no danger of making a precipitate ass of himself. He also was as subtle as a frank and honest nature can be, and he realized that he must proceed warily. An innocent girl can be repelled even by a young and attractive lover, and Mrs. Winstone, although she would smile at a flirtation, would be the last to countenance a scandal in her family. Moreover, it was possible that he might be mistaken in the sensations inspired by this girl with the big shining happy eyes, hair that looked as if about to crackle, and a sort of electric aura. He had been in love before, and recovered with humiliating facility. His reason spoke, but all the rest of him cried out that he was in love, desperately in love, that it was the real thing, at last. And she needed him. That clinched the matter.
He changed the subject abruptly, and, as much as possible, the current of his thoughts. “Of course Mrs. Winstone is enchanting, ripping,” he announced warmly. “Quite the youngest woman in London” (this, without insulting intent). “But after all, you are just grown, and must have friends of your own age. My sister, alas! is in India, but one of her pals married my brother—and her great friend, Lady Ishbel Jones—we are all great pals. I’m sure you’ll like them both —”
“When shall I meet them? Are they my age?”
“Only a little older—twenty-three. Ishbel was married when she was nineteen—her husband is rather a bounder, but unspeakably rich, and she was one of fourteen daughters of a poor Irish peer. Bridgit, my sister-in-law, married for love—my brother is one of the best looking men in the army. She married at eighteen—and has a little chap, but she’s one of the best cross-country riders in England, and a topper at golf and tennis; fine all-round sport, and loves society as much as Ishbel. She’s sweeter, more feminine on the outside, but no more of a brick, and all-there-all-the-time than Bridgit. I’m sure they’re just the friends for you.”
“I’m rather afraid of them; they’re really grown women, and I know quite well that I’m only a child. I realized it a bit the night of my first party at Government House, when I saw the other girls flirting; and on the steamer they teased me a good deal. But I must have some friends of my age. I am beginning to long for them. It is so odd—I was quite happy alone—so long as I knew nothing else. And I didn’t care to marry for years, but—” She gave a side glance at the intent face as close to hers as the etiquette of the drawing-room permitted, hesitated an instant, for she was growing sensitive about her ignorance. But the friendly admiring eyes reassured her, and out came the story of the planets. It was the last straw. Herbert left the house in Tilney Street feeling the one romantic man in England, and almost shaking with excitement.
The duke, a dry ascetic little man, called on the following day and approved of Julia at once. He was not only relieved that his heir had married an innocent girl of good family, but youth was needed in the house of France. His sisters were older and more antiquated than himself, and now that his health was improving, he wished to give political parties and dinners. A beautiful young woman at the head of his staircase or table was an attraction second only to a chef. He hoped she was not quite a fool, and invited her to lunch alone with him in the course of the week, with intent to ascertain if her mind was of a quality that would sprout the seeds he was willing to implant—he was by way of being intellectual himself.
But it was some time before Julia could be drawn out. The big gloomy dining-room, the little man with his dull cold eyes and languid manner, the magnificent footmen, four besides the butler, to wait upon the two seated so far apart at the table, paralyzed her spirits and courage. Moreover, she was bewildered and somewhat fatigued by five days of shopping, milliners, dressmakers, and meeting many more of her aunt’s friends. She felt half disposed to cry, and nearly choked over her food. The duke was rather pleased by her timidity than disappointed; it was not often that he inspired awe (like all little men without personality it had been the dream of his life to electrify a room as he entered it, and annihilate with the eagle in his glance), and, being a gentleman of the old school, he held that young females should be diffident to their natural lords, and modest withal.
With dessert the small army of minions disappeared, and Julia’s face brightened.
“I suppose I’ll get used to all this grandeur in time, but aunt has only one footman, and at home—well, the blacks take turns waiting on the table, whichever happens to have nothing else to do, and they are part of the family, anyhow.”
The duke was shocked, but interested; shocked that even a new recruit to the ranks of the British peerage should be so frank about domestic poverty, and interested in the innocence or the courage which prompted her to speak to the head of the house of France as if he were a parson’s son.
“Quite so. Quite so,” he said genially. “Harold has rather a small establishment himself, but well appointed, of course. Ah—it’s let. I hope you will spend the greater part of your time with me. It is a new experience to see a young face at this table, and a very delightful one.” He had never felt more gracious, and Julia smiled upon him so radiantly that he expanded still further. “Yes, you must certainly live with me. And Harold must stand for Parliament. Now that he has resigned from the navy that will be the career for him. We Frances always have careers, we have never been idlers, and I need some one in the lower House. He could not choose a better moment. The present ministry is in a state of dissolution. You will like politics, of course. All intelligent women do, and more than one woman of this family has been of—ah—quite material assistance to her husband.”
“I don’t know anything about politics, but I can learn. Mother says I must. When can I go to a castle?”
The duke’s mouth was close and ascetic, but it parted in a smile that was almost spontaneous. “Of course you want to see a castle,” he said, teasing her graciously. “All children do.”
Julia flushed and tossed her head. “Well, I’m not so sorry I’m really young. I’ve been in London only a week, but it seems to me that I’ve met hundreds of women who think of nothing but looking young. So, what is there to be ashamed of?”
“Or to blush about? I perceive that we shall be famous friends. You shall go to a castle as soon as Harold returns. I’ll lend him Bosquith for the honeymoon. His own box would not be half romantic enough.”
Julia had been warned by her aunt not to confide her conjugal indifference to the duke, but she remarked impulsively: —
“One couldn’t be romantic with Mr. France, anyhow. I’d rather go there by myself, or with two or three of my new friends.”
“Great heavens!” For the first time in his life the duke (who always conducted family prayers for the servants, even in the height of the season) was almost profane. “Really—upon my word—you must not say such things—nor feel them. I am aware of the circumstances of your marriage, and that you have not had time to learn to love your husband as a wife should, but you must take wifely love and duty for granted. You are married and that is the end of it. As for romance, of course I was only joking. No doubt I was somewhat clumsy, for I rarely joke; romance does not matter in the least, and you must look forward to living with your husband as the highest of—ahem!—earthly happiness. And I must insist that you do not call Harold ‘Mr. France.’ It is not only unnatural, but American. I do not know any Americans, but am told that the wives always allude to their husbands as ‘Mr.’ In a novel I once read, ‘The Wide, Wide, World,’ they always called them ‘Mr.’ It must have been extremely awkward! You will remember, I hope.”
“Yes, sir.”
Julia looked down, and repressed a smile. She might be ignorant and provincial, but she was naturally shrewd and poised; the duke no longer awed her, and, indeed, seemed rather absurd. But, then, she had met so many absurd people in the last few days. She thought with gratitude upon young Herbert and his two enchanting friends, Bridgit Herbert and Ishbel Jones. In the wild rush of her new life they had passed and repassed one another like flashes of lightning, but there had been distinct and agreeable shocks, and she was to lunch with the two young women on the morrow. It was a prospect that consoled her for the ennui of her ordeal with this quite nice but very dull old gentleman.
The duke, however, convinced that he had made an impression, and magnanimously overlooking the indiscretions of youth, kept her for an hour longer, and gave her an outline lesson in politics. He was extremely lucid and chose his words with the precision which distinguished all his public utterances (he fancied his style); also reminded himself that he was addressing an embryonic intelligence. Julia looked at him with wide admiring eyes and thought of Herbert and Bridgit and Ishbel.
There were, at this period of their lives, no two more frivolous and pleasure-loving young women in England than Bridgit Herbert and Ishbel Jones. The one, married three months after she had left the schoolroom, the other rescued suddenly from a ruined castle where food was often scanty and a travelling bog the only excitement, both had thrown themselves into the complex pleasures of society with such ardor and industry that neither had yet found time to discover they were clever women and their husbands two of the dullest men in England.
Mr. James William Jones (alluded to as “Jimmy” to please the enchanting Ishbel, although men let him alone as much as they decently could, unless greedy for tips of the stock market, or the salary of a director on one of his boards) was as generous with money as behoved a newcomer with a beautiful young wife, and a passion for entertaining the British peerage. He might be a bore and a bounder, but he knew what he wanted and he knew how to get it. At forty he was a millionnaire, and, resting on his labors (for Britons, unlike Americans, know when they have enough), became aware that outside of the City he was a nobody. Simultaneously he lifted his gaze to that stellar world known as Society. He read of it, he stared at it from afar—a park chair (for which he paid two pence), an opera stall for which he paid a guinea—and blinked in its radiance. He was first wistful, then angry, then determined. He had many golden keys, but was not long in learning that none would open the door guarding the golden stair. He was an ugly rather flat-featured Welshman, with eyes like black beads and the manners of his native village; he met gentlemen every day in the City, and, being a man of facts, knew himself exactly for what he was. Nevertheless, he would win society as he had won fortune, and (with no keen relish) admitted that for the first time in his life he must stoop to ask the aid of woman. In other words, he must get him a wife, and she must be a lady of high degree. By this time his conclusions were rapid. Being a city millionaire, without youth, looks, or manners, he would have to buy his wife. Ergo, she must be poor.
He immediately embarked upon a study of the British peerage, and with the thoroughness and capacity for detail which play so great a part in the equipment of the self-made, he had within a week a list of impoverished peers long enough to reach to France.
But how was he to meet any of them? He was a solitary man, having had no time to make friends, and, proud in his way, risked no rebuffs from those suave well-groomed beings who honored the City for its base returns. He had not even a poor peer on one of his boards, having, in the old days, regarded them as useless and dangerous.
It was at this point that luck (also an ally of the self-made) came at his call. He was plodding through a society paper when his eye was caught by an editorial paragraph, mysteriously worded. He read it several times, grasped its meaning, and, the hour being propitious, went at once to the editorial offices of The Mart, in Bond Street. Ushered into the presence of the widowed and impoverished lady of some quality who edited the sheet, he asked her bluntly, holding out the paragraph, if “this meant that she introduced people into Society for a consideration.” She colored a dusky crimson at this coarse adaptation of her delicate literary style, but they were not long coming to an understanding, nevertheless. She agreed with him that his only hope was in a wife of the right sort, and asked him to call again a week later. When he returned, she had his record as well as his remedy. With the calm and brazen assurance of which only the well-born thrown on their uppers are capable, she demanded a thousand pounds for her letter of introduction, and another thousand if the wedding came off. He had always despised women and now he laughed outright; nevertheless, when he discovered that the letter was to a poor proud Irish peer, connected with several of the most notable families in England, and the melancholy possessor of fourteen beautiful daughters, ranging from thirty-five years of age to sixteen, he signed the check and the agreement.
The desperate Irish landlord, duly advised from London, received him with true Celtic hospitality, and practically bade him take his choice. As Lady Ishbel was the family’s flower, Jones made up his mind cautiously and promptly, asking for her hand on his third visit. His leaking unventilated quarters in the village inn, and the harsh food of the peer (like many self-made men he was on a diet) had somewhat to do with his rapidity of decision.
Ishbel wept sadly when she received the paternal decree, for she was young and romantic, and her suitor was neither. But not only had she been taught from infancy that marriage was the one escape from bogs and potatoes, and, like her sisters, had lived on the forlorn hope of being invited to London by more fortunate relatives, but she had one of the sweetest and kindest natures in the world; and when her mother wept, and her father told her that Mr. Jones, moved to his depths at the straits of a member of even the Irish peerage, had intimated that he would make him a director of one of his companies, with a salary which would insure him against hunger, and patch up his castle, and when her older sisters urged that she might sacrifice her feelings in order to marry them off in turn, she dried her beautiful eyes, and consented.
Mr. Jones returned at once to London to prepare for his bride, and, again with the help of the Lady of the Bureau, bought him a furnished house in Park Lane. This fact, his many virtues, and his approaching marriage to the “greatest beauty in Ireland” (the Lady of the Bureau by this time felt something like gratitude to her victim and resolved to give him a handsome return for his checks) were duly chronicled in The Mart. The marriage took place at the beginning of the season, and Ishbel’s many relatives received her affectionately and launched her at once, swallowing Mr. Jones without a grimace. Thanks to Nature, her husband’s millions, and the friendly Mart, she became a “beauty” in her first season, and was so intoxicated with the many and delectable dishes offered her starved young palate, that she tolerated and almost forgot her husband. He, in turn, took little interest in her, save as a means to an end. He had bought her as he had bought women before, and, being a plain matter-of-fact person, thought one sort about as good as another. However, he gave her an immense income, and, satisfying himself that she was honest and virtuous, in spite of her irresistible coquetry, left her to her own devices.
She had little education, and no accomplishments, but she studied for an hour and a half every morning with the best masters to be found, and her natural wit and charm, added to her rich Irish beauty, and the sweetness of her disposition, endeared her even to disappointed mothers, and won her something more than popularity in the young married set. The woman with whom she soon drifted into the closest intimacy was, apparently, as unlike herself in all respects as possible.
Bridgit Marchamely, educated with her brothers, and highly accomplished, inherited a fortune from her mother, the only child of a Liverpool shipbuilder, who had married the younger son of a duke. With a mind both subtle and powerful, this lady had ruled her husband during the twenty years of their happiness, brought up her children to think for themselves, and played with society when it suited her convenience. Bridgit, the last of her four children, was the only girl, and with her fine upstanding figure, her flashing black eyes and spirited nostrils, looked as gallant a boy as any of her brothers when she rode astride to hounds in the privacy of her grandfather’s estate in Yorkshire. In spite of what her tutors called her masculine brain, however, she was no traitor to her sex, and fell madly in love with a handsome guardsman in the first week of her first season. Her father thought young Herbert “rather an ass,” but failing to convince his daughter, gave his consent to the match; and she had since kept the young man luxuriously in South Audley Street. She, too, had grown up in the country, being brought to London for a few weeks of opera and concert once a year only, and, her youth getting the better of her fine brain for the nonce, she lived for society in the season and for shooting and hunting and visits to the continent the rest of the year. The fashionable life is the busiest on earth, while its glamor lasts, and with a husband of the old familiar Greek god type (now exclusively English) as fond of the world’s pleasures as herself, and her baby where English babies so sensibly and generally are,—in the country the year round,—it is no wonder that she forgot her studies and aspirations and became a flaming comet in London society.
She was instantly attracted to Ishbel, by the law of opposites she thought, but, as she learned in later years, by a deep-lying similarity of character and mind, at present unsuspected beneath the effervescence of their youth.
Both of these young women were almost as fond of Nigel Herbert as of each other, and although he forbore to confide to them his ultimate purpose in regard to Julia, were properly horrified at the “box that red-headed little Nevis girl had got herself into,” and sympathetic with his state of mind. Men seldom confide their infatuations to other men, but they often do to women, or, if they drop a hint, woman corkscrews the whole story out of them; and these two astute friends of his got Nigel’s the day he asked them to call and “be nice to Mrs. France.” They were still too young to approve of irregular love affairs, but with the optimism of their years were sure it could be arranged somehow, and called at once in Tilney Street.
Mrs. Winstone, delighted to add two young women, so much the fashion, to her set, cultivated them assiduously, confided to them the appalling ignorance of her niece, asked their assistance, and even took them shopping when Julia began to show signs of rebellion and fatigue.
At first they were merely amused; then they found the little West Indian pathetic, finally, like the Captain (alas! but such is life, dropped forever from this veracious chronicle) and young Herbert, began to revolve schemes for “saving her.”
Meanwhile the tired but happy and still unprophetic Julia was preparing for the ordeal of her first curtsy in Buckingham Palace.
Mrs. Winstone won the admiration of her distinguished circle and the high approval of the duke for the tact with which she managed Julia’s destinies at this period. As the bride’s husband was away and she had neither entered society as a maid nor in company with her legal owner, her appearance at balls and formal dinners would have created a scandal. Nevertheless, she must be educated, and Mrs. Winstone cut the difference with her never failing acumen. Her own drawing-room was thronged with “the world” nearly every afternoon; she gave many small dinners to the smartest dissenters from middle-class morality that she knew; it was the era of the problem play, and Julia saw them all, as well as the “halls,” with their strange company in the lobbies; Nigel Herbert and one or two other admirers were encouraged; and the most modern and extreme of the psychological novels and plays littered the room above the mews.
But Julia, although some glimmerings of life’s realities were beginning to penetrate the serene unconsciousness of childhood (enough to induce in her a certain reserve of speech), was far too rushed and bewildered to comprehend more than one-hundredth part of what she heard and saw—the novels and plays she was too tired in her few solitary moments to open. Shopping, fitting, luncheons, dinners, the afternoon gatherings, the theatre, the constant buzz of conversation about politics and scandal, kept the surface of her mind agitated and left the depths untouched. Even Nigel, in spite of his ardent eyes and tender notes, she barely separated from Bridgit and Ishbel, merely conscious that she liked the three better than any one on earth except her mother. If she thought of France at all, it was to experience a sensation of momentary gratitude to the person that had given her this brilliant experience; although, after she began to rehearse daily for the presentation, curtsying before a row of dummies until she ached, backing out with her train over her arm, the correct smile on her face, the correct measure of respect and dignity in her mien, she was disposed to wish herself back on Nevis.
Had it not been for the immense respectability of the duke, and his personal friendship with his sovereign, the application to present the wife of Harold France at the court of St. James might have received scant consideration. He was even under the ban of the royal arbiter eligantiarum. But there was no question of refusing the pointed request of the duke, whom the queen regarded as a model of all the virtues in a degenerate age; and Mrs. Edis was also remembered with favor. The Lady Arabella Torrence, a sister of the duke, was selected to present the bride, and at six o’clock on a raw May morning Julia was aroused by the hair-dresser, and, after an hour’s torture, went to sleep again on a chair with her feathered head swathed in tulle.
The respite was brief. At nine o’clock two women from the great dressmaking establishment patronized by Mrs. Winstone came to array the victim in a train that filled up the entire room.
A cup of strong coffee revived Julia’s flagging spirits and vitality, and she fancied herself mightily when, draped, and sewn, and squeezed, and pinched, she was free at last to admire her reflection in the long mirror. Her gown was pure white, of course, the front of the round skirt covered with tulle and sown with seed pearls, the train of a stiff thick brocade, which would be sent on the morrow to be made into an evening wrap, just as the round frock was to do duty for her first party. Such was the private economy of the presentation costume. The duke had lent her the family pearls, and they depended to her waist and clasped her head. Her skin was as white as her gown and her hair and lips were vivid touches of color. Julia smiled at her reflection, then trembled as she gathered up the train, so much more alarming than the “property” stuff she had used at rehearsals.
Word had come that Lady Arabella was waiting, and cheered by compliments from her aunt and from Bridgit and Ishbel, who rushed in for a moment, she descended to the family coach and sat herself beside her formidable relative.
Lady Arabella was a tall bony big woman, with the large hands and feet which are supposed to be the prerogative of the plebeian, an early Victorian coiffure, and an imposing skeleton religiously exhibited so far as decency permitted and fashion expected, whenever a court function demanded this sacrifice on the part of a loyal subject who suffered from chronic hay fever. She had a deep bass voice, a bristling beard, and approved of nothing modern. “When the queen was young and gave the tone to Society” was a phrase constantly on her lips. She had felt it incumbent upon herself to give the distracted Julia a series of lectures on deportment, particularly on her behavior during the sacred hour of presentation, and had improved the opportunity to let fall many edifying remarks upon the duties of a wife, the shocking manner in which the women of the present generation neglected their husbands. Although she disapproved of her nephew in so far as she understood him, she subtly conveyed to his wife that to be the choice of the future head of the house of France was an overpowering honor.
At first she had terrified Julia, then bored her, finally, as the great day approached, loomed as a rock of strength. Nothing, at least, could frighten her, and she was so big and so conspicuously hideous that it was conceivably possible to shrink behind her.
But there was a preliminary ordeal of which she had heard nothing, a grateful callousing of the nerves before making a bow to a mere sovereign.
Many had waited for the last drawing-room because it would be the smartest, others because it was a bore, to be deferred as long as possible; many had been in Italy or on the Riviera; others had been put on the list by a power higher than their own wills. From whatever combination of causes the procession of slowly moving carriages was as long as the tail of a comet, and at times, particularly while the gorgeous coaches of the ambassadors were driving smartly down the Mall, came to a dead halt. It was then that the sovereign people had their innings.
They lined the streets surrounding the Palace in serried ranks. Not even the American crowd loves a “show” as the British does, Socialists and all. Their ancestors have gaped at gilded coaches and gorgeous robes and sparkling jewels for centuries, and if the day ever comes when they shall have exchanged these amiable pageants of their betters for a full stomach, who shall dare predict that they will be entirely satisfied?
What awe they may have inherited had long since disappeared. They crowded up against the procession of carriages, devouring with their curious good-natured eyes the splendid gowns and jewels, the glimpses of bare shoulders, and the beauty or bones of women apparently insensible of their existence.
For a time Julia clutched nervously at the pearls beneath her cloak, and shrank from that sea of eyes under hats of an indescribable commonness.
“My eye, ain’t her hair red!” exclaimed one young woman, with unmistakable reference. “And a little paint wouldn’t ’urt her.”
“Paint? That there’s high-toned pallor—”
“Pearl powder—”
“Oh, I sy, wot for do they let bibies like that marry when they don’t have to? I call it a shime.”
“Right you are!”
One girl, with a violent color and black frizzled hair that stood out quite eight inches from three parts of her face, thrust her head through the open window of the coach.
“Don’t you mind wot they sy,” she said consolingly. “They’re that nonsensical they can’t ’elp chaffing. And you’re the prettiest and the most haristocratic of the whole lot—I’ve been all up and down the line. And it ain’t powder! My word, but your complexion’s grand!”
She withdrew without waiting for an answer. Julia turned to Lady Arabella, who, throughout the ordeal, had sat as upright as if corseted in iron, and with her long haughty profile turned unflinchingly to the mob. So, it must be conceded, stupid as she was in her pride, would she have sat if they had threatened her life. As Julia asked her timidly (in effect) if the most aristocratic function of the year was always treated like a travelling circus, Lady Arabella answered, without flickering an eyelash: “Always, and fortunately for us. The lower classes love to see us on parade, and the more we give them of this sort of thing, the longer we shall keep their loyalty. Moreover, it serves the purpose—this drawing-room procession, in particular—of bringing us in close touch with the people, serves to demonstrate that we are real mortals, not the ridiculous creatures in the sort of novels they read. I always endeavor to look a symbol. I hope you will learn to do the same in time, for the lower classes are secretly proud of us and like us to play our part. You are drooping. Sit up and present your profile.”
“What’s the use of a profile without a backbone?” said Julia, wearily. “I’m so tired.”
“You must rise above mere physical fatigue,” said the old dame, severely. “People in our class keep our backbones for our bedrooms. When you are inclined to complain, think of the poor royalties, who stand for hours. And don’t finger your pearls. You are supposed to have been born with them about your neck.”
Julia’s sense of humor was not yet fully awake, but her new relative’s words were tonic as well as reassuring; she sat erect, but turned her eyes round her profile to regard this strange lower class of London, of which she had heard much but seen nothing until to-day. They were an ugly lot; beauty would seem to be the prerogative of aristocracy in England, possibly because it is well fed; they wore rough ready-made frocks, or, where finery was attempted, feathers and ribbons inferior to anything Julia had ever seen on the negroes of Nevis; and many of the hats looked as if they might be used as nightcaps to protect the elaborate masses of frizzled hair. Julia, brought up on the soundest aristocratic principles, saw in this gaping good-natured crowd but a broad and solid foundation for the historic institution above.
The coach finally rolled through the gates of Buckingham Palace. For an hour longer she stood, her slippers pinching until her native independence of character almost induced her to kick them off. But she was so tired after a month of London, an almost sleepless night, and the excitements of an already long day, that her brain worked toward no such simple solution, and before her moment came she ached from head to foot. The scene became a blur of vast rooms, of tall women, very thin or very fat, with diamond tiaras above set faces, and trains of every color over their arms, of girls that shifted from one foot to the other and breathed audibly their wish that it were over. One by one they disappeared. There was a sharp emphatic whisper from Lady Arabella. Julia started and set her teeth. “Mind you don’t sit down like that daughter of the American ambassador,” whispered the same fierce nervous voice. “Remember all that you have rehearsed.”
Julia, terrified to her marrow, did as opera singers do in moments of distress; she “fell back on technique.” Afterward she remembered vaguely making a succession of curtsies to a long row of dazzling crowns, but no effort of memory ever recalled the features beneath. She received the train flung over her arm and backed out without disgracing herself, but also without a thrill of that joy which a loyal subject is supposed to feel when in the presence of his sovereign for the first time.
“Not bad,” said Lady Arabella, graciously, as after many more moments, they entered their carriage. But Julia was yawning. When she reached the house in Tilney Street, she went to bed and refused to get up for twenty-four hours.