her. She knew that the end had come. She had known this when she had tried to bring herself to do away with her life; she had known this when she had abandoned her projected excursions to Sicily and Switzerland; above all, she had known it when she had tried to face the gaiety of Paris. She had left Paris before the Fête aux Fleurs in the Bois; before Duse's début in the French capital. For the first time in many years she was missing the Grand Steeple Chase at Auteuil, the Grand Prix de Longchamps. She had been invited to visit Lady Adela Beaminster in London, to stop at Portland Place during the festivities in honour of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. She had found this invitation, too, easy to decline in her present mood. In any case, she could not, at this time, contemplate the idea of facing the horrible old Duchess of Wrexe. One alternative of conduct remained, it occurred to her one day, a day passed entirely in bed, interrupted only by frequent fretful complaints directed at her maid and occasional vain efforts to interest herself in a new novel, and that was the experiment of a reversion to type. Would, she wondered, a return to the scenes where she had spent her childhood, girlhood, and young womanhood, scenes which she had not visited for twenty—or was it twenty-five?—years, succeed in making her forget? Would she be able, after more than two radiant decades of European society, to arrange a new, if somewhat different career against the background of the past?
Page:The Tattooed Countess (1924).pdf/27
