"No; Torquay will not do, delightful as it would be to have you so near. I have been reading about the climate in the South of France, and I am sure, if you are careful, a winter there will do you worlds of good. Next year——"
"Next year we can go there together, and you will take care of me. Was that what you were going to say, Belle?"
"Something like that."
"Yes" he said, slowly, after a thoughtful pause, "I shall be glad to be away from London, and all old associations. My past life is a worthless husk that I have done with for ever."
CHAPTER VI.
IN SOCIETY.
The Easter recess was over. Society had returned from its brief holiday—its glimpse of budding hedges and primrose-dotted banks, blue skies and blue violets, the snowy bloom of orchards, the tender green of young cornfields. Society had come back again, and was hard at the London treadmill—yawning at old operas, and damning new plays—sniggering at crowded soirées—laying down the law, each man his particular branch thereof, at carefully planned dinner parties—quarrelling and making friends again—eating and drinking—spending and wasting, and pretending to care very little about anything; for society is as salt that has lost its savour if it is not cynical and affected.
But there was one débutante at least that season for whom town pleasures had lost none of their freshness, for whom the old operas were all melody, and the new plays all wit—who admired everything with frankest wonder and enthusiasm, and without a thought of Horace, or Pope, or Creech, or anybody, except the lover who was always at her side, and who shed the rose-coloured light of happiness upon the commonest things. To sit in the Green Park on a mild April morning, to see the guard turn out by St. James's Palace after breakfast, to loiter away an hour or two at a picture gallery—was to be infinitely happy. Neither opera nor play, dinner nor dance, race-course nor flower-show, was needed to complete the sum of Christabel's bliss when Angus Hamleigh was with her.
He had returned from Hyères, quietest among the southern towns, wonderfully improved in health and strength. Even Mrs. Tregonell and Miss Bridgeman perceived the change in him.