Julia’s eyes, wide and star-like as they were, missed not a detail, and she felt as happy as on the night of her first party. The journey had been monotonous, the passengers, when not ill, rather dull. Therefore was her plastic mind shaped to drink down in great draughts the pleasures promised by the city of her dreams. Moreover, never in her life had she felt so well. The eighteen days at sea, the wholesome food, the constant exercise in which a good sailor always indulges, if only to get away with the time, long days in cold salt air, had crimsoned her blood, vitalized every organ. France and the reason of her translation to London she had almost forgotten. There had been a hurried marriage at Great House; then, almost before the wine had been tasted, the indignant bridegroom had been summoned to his ship, which, with the rest of the squadron, had sailed two hours later. There had been a succession of infuriated letters, mailed at the different islands, and Julia knew that France intended to leave the service as soon as he set foot in England; but as that could not be for weeks to come, she had dismissed him from her mind.
“Shall I live here?” she asked at length, as they drove down the wide Mall, one of the finest avenues in Christendom, and half rising to look at Buckingham Palace.
“You should know.” Mrs. Winstone had received only a cablegram from her sister. “France has a house, a bit of a place in Hertfordshire, but only rooms in town, so far as I know. The duke, however, may ask you to stop with him in St. James’s Square—for a bit. He seems enchanted to get France married, but it is rather fortunate that I have known him for years and can vouch for you. France, returning with a bride from the antipodes—well —”
“Of course the duke would expect some one much older, Mr. France is so old himself. But I’m glad he doesn’t mind, for I want to live in castles. It’s too bad Mr. France hasn’t one.”
“Is that what you married France for? I have wondered.”
Julia shrugged her restless young shoulders, and looked at the carriages full of finery rolling between the columns of Hyde Park.
“Mother told me to marry him and I did, of course. I have known, ever since I was about eight, that I was to marry at this time and start upon some wonderful career, for there’s no getting the best of the planets. I had to take the man who came along at the right moment.”
Mrs. Winstone was one of those extremely smart English women who put on an expression of youthful vacuity with their public toilettes, but at this point she so far forgot herself as to sit up and gasp.
“Not that old nonsense! You don’t mean to tell me that Jane still believes—why, I had forgotten the thing. Hinson! Home!”
As the carriage turned and rolled toward Tilney Street Mrs. Winstone, really interested for the first time, stared hard at the face beside her. Had she a child on her hands? It had been rather a bore, the prospect of fitting out and putting through her preliminary paces a young West Indian bride, mooning the while for an absent groom. But she had never seen any one look less like a bride, more heart-whole.