CHAPTER XXXI.
"A WORTHLESS WOMAN, MERE COLD CLAY."
Neither Lydia Graham nor her brother were quick to recover from the disappointment caused by the untimely fate of Lionel Dale. Miss Graham endeavoured to sustain her failing spirits with the hope that in Douglas she might find a wealthier prize than his brother; but Douglas was yet to be enslaved by those charms which Lydia herself felt were on the wane, and by fascinations which twelve years of fashionable existence had rendered somewhat stale even to the fair Lydia's most ardent admirers.
It was very bitter—the cup had been so near her lips, when an adverse destiny had dashed it from her. The lady's grief was painfully sincere. She did not waste one lamentation on her lover's sad fate, but she most bitterly regretted her own loss of a rich husband.
She watched and hoped day after day for the promised visit from Douglas Dale, but he did not come. Every day during visiting hours she wore her most becoming toilets; she arranged her small drawing-room with the studied carelessness of an elegant woman; she seated herself in her most graceful attitudes every time the knocker heralded the advent of a caller; but it was all so much wasted labour. The only guest whom she cared to see was not among those morning visitors; and Lydia's heart began to be oppressed by a sense of despair.
"Well, Gordon, have you heard anything of Douglas Dale?" she asked her brother, day after day.
One day he came home with a very gloomy face, and when she uttered the usual question, he answered her in his gloomiest tone.
"I've heard something you'll scarcely care to learn," he said, "as it must sound the death-knell of all your hopes in that quarter. You know, Douglas Dale is a member of the Phoenix, as well as the Forum. I don't belong to the Phoenix, as you also know, but I meet Dale occasionally at the Forum. Yesterday I lunched with Lord Caversham, a member of the Phoenix, and an acquaintance of Dale's; and from him I learned that Douglas Dale has publicly announced his intended marriage with Paulina Durski."
"Impossible!" exclaimed Lydia.
She had heard of Paulina and the villa at Fulham from her brother, and she hated the lovely Austrian for the beauty and the fascination which won her a kind of renown amongst the fops and lordlings—the idlers and spendthrifts of the fashionable clubs.