The Duchess had suffered, during the last five or six years, from sleeplessness, and throughout these hot days and nights of June and July sleep almost deserted her. Grimly she gave it no quarter, allowing to no one that she was sleeping badly, pretending even to Christopher that all was well.
Nevertheless those long dark hours began to tell upon her. She had known many nights sleepless through pain, certain nights sleepless through anxiety, but they, terrible though they had been, had not worn so stern a look as these long black spaces of time when all rest and comfort seemed to be drawn from her by some mysterious hand.
To herself now she admitted that she dreaded that moment when Dorchester left her; she began to do what she had never in her life done before, to fall asleep during the daytime. Small mercy to anyone who might attract any attention to those little naps.
She fell asleep often towards six or seven and, therefore, without any comment, Dorchester, seeing her fatigue, left her to sleep until late in the morning. She had not for many years left her room before midday, but she had been awake with her correspondence and the papers by half-past seven at the latest. Now it was often eleven before she awoke.
She found that she did not awake with the energy and freshness that she had always known before. About her there always hovered a great cloud of fatigue—something not quite present, but threatening at any moment to descend.
On a certain morning late in July she awoke after two or three hours' restless sleep. As she woke she was conscious that those hours had not removed from her that threatening cloud: she heard a clock strike eleven. Dorchester was drawing back the curtains and from behind the blinds there leapt upon her a blazing, torrid day.
Her bedroom carried on the touch of fantasy that her other room had shown; she was lying in a red lacquer Japanese bed that mounted up behind her like a throne. Her wall-paper was an embossed dull gold and the chairs were carved Indian, of black ebony.
Lying in bed she appeared very old and ugly; the sharp nose was exceedingly prominent and her white hair scattered about the pillow gave her face the colour of dried parchment.
Dorchester brought her her chocolate and her letters and The Times and the Morning Post.
"Another terribly hot day, your Grace."