I shall never hurry matters. If he cares for me as deeply as I once thought, he will write to me soon or make some sign. Meanwhile—oh, I am free! Free and rich and young again! The shadows are fading away.
Grandmamma was right.
"Remember, above all things, that life is full of compensations."
Dear grandmamma! I wish you could come back to enjoy this second youth with me.
Shall I travel? It is late June now. Shall I go and see the world, or shall I wait, and perhaps, later on, have a companion to see it with me?
To avoid the Coronation festivities, when all details about my transfer of Augustus's property to Amelia were finished, I went over to France. I should stop at Versailles for a month and see the Marquis in Paris, and then, perhaps, go back to the cottage.
I had often heard from Lady Tilchester—charming, sympathetic, feminine letters. I must come to them at Harley whenever I decided to go out a little, she said. I felt the whole of the world was opening fairly for me.
I stopped a day or two in Paris to do a little shopping on my way to
Versailles, and coming down the steps at Ritz one day I met Mr. Budge.
He had come over for a breath of gayer air, he told me, after the
Coronation fiasco.
"You are looking wonderfully well," he said, "and not quite fifty years old now."
"I am hardly more than thirty," I informed him, "and hope, if the weather keeps fine, to grow a little younger still."