Edith Wharton - Novella 01 by Fast (and) Loose (v2.1)

said Mr. Graham, angrily. He had set his
heart on the match & these warnings of his wife’s, which he could not in
his heart despise, made him uneasy.
                   
     
  XI.
 
 
                 The End of the
Season.
     
                 “Adieu, bal, plaisir, amour! On
disait: Pauvre Constance!
  Et on dansait
jusqu’au Jour chez l’ambassadeur de France.”
  Delavigne.
     
                 On
a certain evening near the close of those busy, rushing summer months which
Londoners call “the season,” Lady Breton was sitting alone in the long,
luxurious dressing-room which opened off her satin-hung boudoir. She wore one
of those mysterious combinations of lace & ribands & soft folds called
a wrapper, & as she leaned back rather wearily in her deep-arm-chair, her
slippered feet were stretched out to meet the glow of the small wood-fire
crackling on the hearth. There was no other light in the room, but the
fire-flash, unless a certain dull twilight gleam through the dark folds of the
curtains, deserves such a name; for my lady had given orders not to be
disturbed, adding that she would ring for the lamps. But in the soft,
flickering of the flames, that rose & fell fitfully, it was a very white
& mournful face that sank back in the shadow of the crimson cushion; a face
in which there was no discernible trace of the rosy, audacious Georgie Rivers
whom we used to know. Nor was it the splendid, resistless Lady Breton who had
taken London by storm that Summer ;
but only a very miserable little personage, occasionally breaking the twilight
hush of the warm room with a heavy, aching cough, that made her lean shivering
nearer the pleasant blaze. In fact, Georgie had at last broken down, in body
& mind, under the weight of her bitter mistake; which all her triumphs
& her petty glories seemed only to make bitterer, with a sense of something
empty & unsatisfied, lower than the surface-gayety of the ball-room. The
pang had deepened & deepened, driving her farther into the ceaseless rush
of society with the vain hope of losing her individual sorrow there; no one was
gayer than Lady Breton. But at home, in the grand house, with its grave
servants & its pictures & treasures, that was no more hope of
forgetting than abroad. Any sympathy that might eventually have grown up
between the old lord & his young wife, had been frozen by Georgie’s
persistent indifference to him; & whatever love his worn-out old heart had
at first lavished on her, was lost in the nearer interests of a good dinner or
an amusing play. Lord Breton, in short, relapsed entirely into his
bachelor-habits, & was only with his wife, or
conscious of her existence when she presided at his table, or entered a
ball-room at his side. He was not ungenerous; he allowed her plenty of liberty
& still had a comfortable pleasure in feeling that he was the possessor of
the most charming woman in London—but day by day, she became less a part of his
life. And still at her heart clung the love that she had despised of old, &
whose unconquerable reality she was learning now—too late. Jack Egerton’s
reproaches seemed to have been the last drop in her cup of shame &
bitterness—again & again came the wretched, haunting thought that she had
lost Guy’s esteem forever, & nothing could win back the place in his heart
that she had sold so cheap. So she mused on in the closing darkness, over the
firelight, & it was 8 o’clock when she rang for her maid, who came in
with the lamps & a bottle of cough-syrup for my lady. Georgie rose wearily
from her seat, drawing a soft shawl close about her shoulders; &, as the
maid stood waiting for orders, said between her painful coughing: “I shall
dress for the ball now, Sidenham.” “But, my lady,” the woman answered, “you
have had no dinner.” “No, I did not want any, thanks. It is time to dress.” “But—my
lady,” persisted the maid, “your cough is so bad… indeed, my lady…”