It was less of a success than her first season had been.
It was assumed that she had by this time made her own friends, and her mother's contemporaries accordingly took less pains in the matter of introductions on her behalf.
If it be true that nothing succeeds like success, it is truer still that nothing fails so completely as a failure.
When Alex had sat out four or five dances at a ball, partnerless, her conviction of her own social degradation was absolutely overwhelming. Her surroundings only interested her as a background to her own personality, and as she derived no pleasure, but only disappointment and mortification, from the majority of the functions at which she was present, her young, expressive face unconsciously advertised both her vexation and the cause of it.
Her youth and her vanity alike were in rebellion against the truth, which she more than half divined, that she, who so longed to please and to attract, was as utterly devoid of that magnetic charm possessed by other girls in a lesser, and by Queenie Goldstein in supreme, degree, as it was possible for a reasonably pretty and healthy young girl to be.
Neither her health nor her beauty improved, moreover.
Late hours, in her case, uncounteracted by the vivid sparkle of enjoyment, drew unbecoming dark circles beneath her eyes, and the physical fatigue always engendered in her by boredom was most unmistakably manifested in her slouching shoulders and mournful pallor.
"Alex a son air bête aujourd'hui."
Memory mercilessly recalled to her the old gibe of her schoolmates sometimes, as she felt, against her own will, her features stiffening into the stupid "tragedy-queen" look which had met with the mocking of her companions.
"Do try and cheer up, darlin'," Lady Isabel sometimes said, with more impatience than compassion in her voice, as she glanced at her daughter; and the implication that her looks were betraying her feelings made Alex more wretched and self-conscious than ever.