But the night following her interview with Preston Cheney she never closed her eyes in sleep. It was in vain that she tried all known recipes for producing slumber. She said the alphabet backward ten times; she counted one thousand; she conjured up visions of sheep jumping the time-honoured fence in battalions, yet the sleep god never once drew near.
“I am certainly a brilliant illustration of the saying that there is no fool like an old fool,” she said to herself as the night wore on, and the strange sensation of pain and loss which Preston Cheney’s unexpected announcement had caused her gnawed at her breast like a rat in a wainscot.
That she had been unusually interested in the young editor she knew from the first; that she had been mortally wounded by Cupid’s shaft she only now discovered. She had passed through a divorce, two “affairs” and a legitimate widowhood, without feeling any of the keen emotions which now drove sleep from her eyes. A long time ago, longer than she cared to remember, she had experienced such emotions, but she had supposed such folly only possible in the high tide of early youth. It was absurd, nay more, it was ridiculous to lie awake at her time of life thinking about a penniless country youth whose mother she might almost have been. In this bitterly frank fashion the Baroness reasoned with herself as she lay quite still in her luxurious bed, and tried to sleep.
Yet despite her frankness, her philosophy and her reasoning, the rasping hurt at her heart remained—a hurt so cruel it seemed to her the end of all peace or pleasure in life.
It is harder to bear the suffocating heat of a late September day which the year sometimes brings, than all the burning June suns.
The Baroness heard the click of Preston’s key in the street door, and she listened to his slow step as he ascended the stairs. She heard him pause, too, and waited for the sound of the opening of his room door, which was situated exactly above her own. But she listened in vain, her ears, brain and heart on the alert with surprise, curiosity, and at last suspicion. The Baroness was as full of curiosity as a cat.
It was not until just before dawn that she heard his step in the hall, and his door open and close.
An hour later a sharp ring came at the street door bell. A message for Mr Preston, the servant said, in answer to her mistress’s question as she descended from the room above.
“Was Mr Preston awake when you rapped on his door?” asked the Baroness.
“Yes, madame, awake and dressed.”