However, life must go on in its accustomed groove, and the night before his departure was spent with Beatrice and her brother, who were giving a select dinner party. Randolph and Monica seldom spent an evening at home alone now.
Beatrice Wentworth’s little parties were very popular. She was an excellent hostess, her endless sparkle and flow of spirit kept her guests well amused, and she treated her numerous admirers with a provoking friendliness and equality that was diverting to witness. Lord Haddon was a favourite, too, from his good-natured simplicity and frankness; and there was an easy unconstrained atmosphere about their house that made it a pleasant place of resort to its habitués.
Monica had grown fond of Beatrice, in her quiet, undemonstrative fashion, and felt more at home in her house than in any other. Sometimes when those two were alone together Beatrice would lay aside that brilliant sparkle and flow of spirit, and lapse into a sudden gravity and seriousness that would have astonished many of her friends and acquaintances had they chanced to witness it. Sometimes Monica fancied at such moments that some kind of cloud rested upon the handsome, dashing girl, that her past held some tear-stained page, some sad or painful memory; and it was this conviction that had won Monica’s confidence and friendship more than anything else. She could not make a true friend of any one who had never known sorrow.
To-night Monica was unusually distraite, sad and heavy at heart, she hardly knew why; finding it unusually difficult to talk or smile, or to hide from the eyes of others the melancholy that oppressed her. She felt a strange craving for her husband’s presence. She wanted him near her. She longed to return to those first days of married life, when his compassion for her made him so tender, when he was always with her, and she believed that he loved her. Sometimes she had been almost happy then, despite the wrench from the old associations and the strangeness of all around. Now she was always sad and heavy-hearted; and to-night she was curiously oppressed.
It was only at this house that she could ever be persuaded to sing, and to-night it was not till the end of the evening that Lord Haddon’s entreaties prevailed with her. She rose at last and crossed to the piano, and sitting down without any music before her, sang a simple melodious setting to some words of Christina Rossetti’s:—
“When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress-tree.