Between her dreaming eyes and the silhouetted backs of the footman and chauffeur imagination made a memory momentarily real; she saw, as it were limned darkly upon the plate-glass partition, the face of Dobbin, Richard Daubeney as that night had reintroduced him: the bold, brown face, lighted by clear eyes and an occasional gleam of teeth, of the adventurer into whom exile had metamorphosed Dobbin. Understanding, self-reliant, dependable: qualities that might have made Dobbin a rival for Bellamy to reckon with had he been able to boast them of old. But in those days he had been no more than ardent and eloquent and dear. He had needed to go away to war to find what he had lacked to make him—well, yes, dangerous. Dangerous, that is, to any but a woman well in love with her husband....
She discovered that the car was already at a standstill. Immersed in reverie, she hadn't noticed the turn off from the Avenue.
As always, her home enfolded her in its comfortable atmosphere of security from every assault of adversity by virtue of the solid wealth upon which it was founded, that formidable whole into which two great fortunes had been fused by her marriage with Bellamy. Neither she nor Bel had ever known one qualm of financial uneasiness, neither by chance conceivable ever would. That irking insecurity which so largely poisons the common lot was something wholly foreign to the ken of the Druces, they must brew their own poisons to take its tonic place. None the less the feeling of her home's stability was precious, Lucinda basked in it like a cat on an accustomed hearth, wanting it she must have felt hopelessly lost and forlorn.
She went slowly up to her rooms. And here, where so large a part of her life was lived, the sense of completely satisfying personal environment was more than ever strong.
Pensively giving herself into the hands of her maid, she stood opposite a long mirror. A shade of concern tinged the regard she bent upon that charming counterfeit, her interest grew meticulous as she observed that slender and subtly fashioned body emerge from its silken sheaths. Where were the signs of age, of fading charm? What was it Bel saw in other women and failed to see in her? What could they give him that she had not to give? Was her real rival only man's insatiable appetite for some new thing?
She was as vain as any woman, if no more so than the next; and if she failed to perceive flaws, she failed with more excuse than most could claim.
Supple and young and fair, and slighted....
Her heart, too, she searched. But there was nothing wanting there that the most exacting husband and lover could require. She had told Dobbin the simple truth: she still loved Bel.
But love and beauty, it seemed, were not enough.
For a long time she lay awake in bed, the book unopened in her hands, again a creature of unthinking gratification in the consciousness of Home.