Or was it that he, like all his world, thought so lightly of passing from one love to another that fidelity to Lady Tilchester was among the catalogue of things that do not count.
I had taken no pains to hide my whereabouts.
At each hotel they would know to where I had gone on. For days a feverish excitement took possession of me. Every knock at the door made me start. Would he write? Would he make any sign? I almost prayed not, and yet I feared and longed to hear from him.
This is not a school-girl love story I am writing, but the chronicle of my life. I have always despised sentimental heart-burnings, and when I used to read of the heroine dying for love, it always made me laugh. But, oh, never again can I know such bitterness in life as I have suffered in this black week—to have been so near to bliss, and now to be away forever!
What good to me were my freedom and riches? As well be married or dead. I never knew before how much I had been looking forward to seeing Antony again. I never realized how, instinctively, for months my soul had been living in the background on this thought.
And now it was all finished. I must not be a coward. Oh, how I wished again for grandmamma's spirit! This time I must tear the whole thing out of my life at once.
To go on caring for another woman's lover was beneath contempt.
When I should have recovered a little, I would go back to England and mix with the world, and gradually forget, and eventually marry the Duke. Fortunately, as the Marquis said, à vingt ans one could never be sure of love lasting. So probably I should soon be cured, and there would be compensation in being an English duchess. It was a great position, as Miss Corrisande K. Trumpet had said. And all men make good enough husbands if you have control of the dollars, I remember she added.
Well, I should have control of the dollars. So we should see.
The Duke was a gentleman, too, and intelligent, agreeable, and had liberal views. His Duchess might eventually have a "friend," like the rest, he had said. So, no doubt, I should be able to acquire the habit of thus amusing myself. Why should I hesitate, when the best and the noblest gave me examples?