He tried to picture that glorious beauty changed to ugliness, tried and could not; for he could not banish her image as he had seen her in Italy. Her beauty sparkled and shone before him; and imagination could not conjure up the tragic transformation.
"There is no change that could lessen my love," he thought. "She has grown into my heart, and is a part of my life. I may be appalled when I see her, may suffer tortures at a sight so piteous; but she will be dearer to me in her ruined beauty than the handsomest woman in London."
He thought of one of the handsomest, the exquisite Lady Coventry, the younger of the Gunning sisters, whose brief reign was hastening towards its melancholy close: a butterfly creature, inferior to Antonia in all mental qualities, but with much grace and sparkle, and an Irishwoman's high spirits. The Ring in Hyde Park, the Rotunda at Ranelagh, the Opera House and the Pantheon, would be poorer for the loss of that brilliant figure.
"And if Antonia appears there no more 'twill be two stars dropped out of our firmament," thought Dunkeld.
It was in vain that Patty urged her friend to try the waters of Bath or Bristol, as Dr. Heberden had advised, seeing that his patient was slow to recover her strength. Antonia refused to leave St. James's Square.
"If I went to drink the waters I should have a host of trivial acquaintances buzzing round me," she told Patty. "And I have taken a hatred of all company, but yours and Sophy's. Indeed, I think I hate the world. Here I am as safe as in a prison; for my fine friends will think the house infected, and will be afraid to trust their beauty in it."
"Sure there has been pains enough taken to drive away the contagion," said Sophy, who had suffered some inconvenience from the stringent measures Lady Kilrush had insisted upon after her recovery.
"But my friends do not know that, and till they forget my illness this house is my castle."
Mrs. Granger dropped in at teatime two or three times a week, and brought the gossip of the town, and exercised all her wit to enliven her friend; but Antonia seemed sunk in a hopeless languor and melancholy, and only affected an interest in the outside world to please her visitor.