"Oh, yes," said Joseph, with an ugly sneer and a scowl at Ida as she
was leaving the room, "we have had a very happy time--some of us--a
particularly happy time, I don't think!"
CHAPTER XXX.
It was hot at Woodgreen; but it was hotter still in Mayfair, where the
season was drawing to a close with all the signs of a long-spun-out and
exhausting dissolution. Women were waxing pale under the prolonged
strain of entertainments which for the last week or two had been
matters of duty rather than pleasure, and many a girl who had entered
the lists of society a blushing and hopeful _debutante_ with perhaps a
ducal coronet in her mind's eye, was beginning to think that she would
have to be content with, say, the simpler one of a viscountess; or even
to wed with no coronet at all. Many of the men were down at Cowes or
golfing at St. Andrews; and those unfortunates who were detained in
attendance at the house which continued to sit, like a "broody hen," as
Howard said, longed and sighed for the coming of the magic 12th of
August, before which date they assured themselves the House _must_ rise
and so bring about their long-delayed holiday.
Pages:
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473
474