XXX.
KATE CLEPHANE was wakened by the slant of Riviera sun across her bed.
The hotel was different; it was several rungs higher on the ladder than the Minorque et l’Univers, as its name—the Petit Palais—plainly indicated. The bedroom, too, was bigger, more modern, more freshly painted; and the corner window of the tiny adjoining salon actually clipped a wedge of sea in its narrow frame.
So much was changed for the better in Mrs. Clephane’s condition; in other respects, she had the feeling of having simply turned back a chapter, and begun again at the top of the same dull page.
Her maid, Aline, was obviously of the same opinion; in spite of the more commodious room, and the sitting-room with its costly inset of sea, Mrs. Clephane had not recovered her lost prestige in Aline’s estimation. “What was the good of all the fuss if it was to end in this?” Aline’s look seemed to say, every morning when she brought in the breakfast-tray. Even the fact that letters now lay on it more frequently, and that telegrams were no longer considered epoch-making, did not compensate for the general collapse of Aline’s plans and ambitions. When one had had a good roof over one’s head, and a good motor at one’s door, what was the sense of bolting away from them at a moment’s notice and coming back to second-rate hotels and rattling taxis, with all the loss of consequence implied? Aline remained icily silent when her mistress, after a few weeks at the Petit Palais, mentioned that she had written to enquire about prices at Dinard for the summer.
Kate Clephane, on the whole, took the change more philosophically. To begin with, it had been her own choice to fly as she had; and that in itself was a help—at times; and then—well, yes,—already, after the first weeks, she had begun to be aware that she was slipping back without too much discomfort into the old groove.
The first month after her arrival wouldn’t yet bear thinking about; but it was well behind her now, and habit was working its usual miracle. She had been touched by the welcome her old friends and acquaintances had given her, and exquisitely relieved—after the first plunge—to find herself again among people who asked no questions about her absence, betrayed no curiosity about it, and probably felt none. They were all very much occupied with each other’s doings when they were together, but the group was so continually breaking up and reshaping itself, with the addition of new elements, and the departing scattered in so many different directions, and toward destinations so unguessable, that once out of sight they seemed to have no more substance or permanence than figures twitching by on a film.
This sense of unsubstantiality had eased Kate Clephane’s taut nerves, and helped her to sink back almost unaware into her old way of life. Enough was known of her own existence in the interval—a shadowy glimpse of New York opulence, an Opera box, a massive and important family, a beautiful daughter married to a War Hero—to add considerably to her standing in the group; but her Riviera friends were all pleasantly incurious as to details. In most of their lives there were episodes to be bridged over by verbal acrobatics, and they were all accustomed to taking each other’s fibs at their face-value. Of Mrs. Clephane they did not even ask any: she came back handsomer, better dressed—yes, my dear, actually sables!—and she offered them cock-tails and Mah-Jongg in her own sitting-room (with a view of the sea thrown in). They were glad of so useful a recruit, and the distance between her social state and theirs was not wide enough to awaken acrimony or envy.
“Aline!”
The maid’s door was just across the passage now; she appeared almost at once, bearing a breakfast-tray on which were several letters.