“She’s beyond a joke, Adele,” she said. “I hear she’s got a scrap-book, and puts in picture post-cards and photographs of country-houses, with dates below them to indicate she has been there——”
“No!” said Adele. “How heavenly of her. I must see it, or did you make it up?”
“Indeed I didn’t,” said the injured Marcia. “And she’s got in it a picture post-card of the moat-garden at Whitby with the date of the Sunday before last, when I had a party there and didn’t ask her. Besides, she was in London at the time. And there’s one of Buckingham Palace Garden, with the date of the last garden-party. Was she asked?”
“I haven’t heard she was,” said Adele.
“Then you may be sure she wasn’t. She’s beyond a joke, I tell you, and I’m not going to ask her to my dance. I won’t, I won’t—I will not. And she asked me to dine three times last week. It isn’t fair: it’s bullying. A weak-minded person would have submitted, but I’m not weak-minded, and I won’t be bullied. I won’t be forcibly fed, and I won’t ask her to my dance. There!”
“Don’t be so unkind,” said Adele. “Besides, you’ll meet her down at my house only a few days afterward, and it will be awkward. Everybody else will have been.”
“Well, then she can pretend she has been exclusive,” said Marcia snappily, “and she’ll like that....”
The rumours solidified into fact, and soon Lucia was forced to the dreadful conclusion that Marcia’s ball was to take place without her. That was an intolerable thought, and she gave Marcia one more chance by ringing her up and inviting her to dinner on that night (so as to remind her she knew nothing about the ball), but Marcia’s stony voice replied that most unfortunately she had a few people to dinner herself. Wherever she went (and where now did Lucia not go?) she heard talk of the ball, and the plethora of Princes and Princesses that were to attend it.
For a moment the thought of Princesses lightened the depression of this topic. Princess Isabel was rather seriously ill with influenza, so Lucia, driving down Park Lane, thought it would not be amiss to call and enquire how she was, for she had noticed that sometimes the papers recorded the names of enquirers. She did not any longer care in the least how Princess Isabel was; whether she died or recovered was a matter of complete indifference to her in her present embittered frame of mind, for the Princess had not taken the smallest notice of her all these weeks. However, there was the front door open, for there were other enquirers on the threshold, and Lucia joined them. She presented her card, and asked in a trembling voice what news there was, and was told that the Princess was no better. Lucia bowed her head in resignation, and then, after faltering a moment in her walk, pulled herself together, and with a firmer step went back to her motor.
After this interlude her mind returned to the terrible topic. She was due at a drawing-room meeting at Sophy Alingsby’s house to hear a lecture on psycho-analysis, and she really hardly felt up to it. But there would certainly be a quantity of interesting people there, and the lecture itself might possibly be of interest, and so before long she found herself in the black dining-room, which had been cleared for the purpose. With the self-effacing instincts of the English the audience had left the front row chairs completely unoccupied, and she got a very good place. The lecture had just begun, and so her entry was not unmarked. Stephen was there, and as she seated herself, she nodded to him, and patted the empty chair by her side with a beckoning gesture. Her lover, therefore, sidled up to her and took it.