All that summer every one spoke of "Jubilee weather," and London grew hotter and sunnier and more crowded day by day.
Alex found herself wishing, fretfully and almost angrily, that she could enjoy it all. But the sensation of loneliness that had always oppressed her, although she did not analyse it, was always most poignant amongst a great number of people, and her listlessness and self-absorption in society at last caused Lady Isabel to ask her gently, but with unmistakable vexation, whether she had rather "leave most of the gaieties to little Barbara, to whom it's all new and amusing."
"Why?" asked Alex, startled.
"My darling, I can see you're not very happy, and I quite understand that, of course, one doesn't get over these things in a minute," said Lady Isabel, with a sigh for the memory of Noel Cardew. "This will be your third season, and I had hoped it would be the best of them all, what with the Jubilee celebrations and everything—but if you're rather out of heart with the gaieties just now, I don't want to force you into them, poor child."
Lady Isabel gazed with wistful, puzzled eyes that held nothing but uncomprehending perplexity at her disappointing eldest daughter. Alex knew that she was wondering silently why that daughter, expensively educated and still more expensively dressed, admittedly pretty and well-bred, should still lack any semblance of attractiveness, should still fail to achieve any semblance of popularity.
Alex herself wondered drearily if she was always destined to find herself out of all harmony with her surroundings. She never questioned but that the fault lay entirely in herself, and a sort of fatalism made her accept it all with apathetic matter-of-factness.
She gave inert acquiescence to Lady Isabel's tentative suggestion that most of the invitations pouring in daily should be accepted on Barbara's behalf only, partly because she hated being taken out with her sister, who was always critical and observant, and partly from sheer desire that Lady Isabel should no longer have the mortification of watching a social progress, the indifference of which Alex regarded with morbid exaggeration.
Barbara, rather to Alex' surprise, although enjoying herself with a sort of quiet determination, proved to be exceedingly shy, but in two months she had achieved several gushing, intimate friendships with girls rather older than herself, which led to her receiving innumerable invitations to tea-parties, a form of entertainment always abhorred by Alex, but from which Barbara generally returned with one or two new acquaintances, who were sure to claim dances from her on meeting her at subsequent balls.
She was not very pretty, and evening dresses, displaying her thin arms and shoulders, took away from the effect of smartness that she had acquired in France, but she danced exceptionally well, and was seldom left partnerless.
Alex often wondered what Barbara, who was notoriously silent and awkward with strangers, could find to talk about to her partners.