Her mother was prostrated with a violent headache and had been obliged to send an excuse.
“Such a dreadful thing to do,” grumbled Augusta to her maid as she revolved before the pier glass. “Have you asked Marie the particulars? Is my mother really ill?”
“Dreadful, I believe, miss.”
“It makes me feel heartless to leave her, but one of us must go, that is certain. Can I see her?”
“No, miss. She is trying to sleep.”
“People may have an idea that the path of an American heiress who is going to marry an English Duke is strewn with Jacqueminots; I wish they knew what I have gone through in the last month. I wish to heaven papa would come over.”
It was a bright and lively dinner given by a very young and newly-titled United Statesian, who treated the British peerage as a large and lovely joke, and was accepted on much the same footing. The Duke, who had pulled himself together since the swerve in his fortunes, looked something more of a man. His cheeks had more colour and his eye-belongings less. He held himself erectly and talked well. Augusta bored him hideously, but he reflected that a Duke need see little of his Duchess, and filled his present rôle creditably. Fletcher Cuyler as usual was the life of the company, and even Augusta forgot to be intellectual.
A theatre party followed the dinner. Augusta returned to the hotel a little after midnight. As she opened the door of the private drawing-room of Mrs. Forbes’ suite, she saw with surprise that her mother was sitting by one of the tables.
“I thought you were in bed with a headache,” she began, and then uttered an exclamation of alarm and went hastily forward.
Mrs. Forbes, as white as the dead, her hair unbound and dishevelled, her eyes swollen, sat with clenched hands pressed hard against her cheeks.