And thus the season wore on in extreme weariness and deep mortification. The Fairchilds made no headway at all. She made no acquaintances at all at the opera, as she had fondly hoped. She even regretted that her husband had refused their seats to the Bankheads. Had he yielded them a favor may be they would have spoken to them.
Desperate, at last, she determined she would do something. She would give a party. But who to ask?
Not old friends and acquaintance. That was not to be thought of. But who else? She knew nobody.
"It was not necessary to know them," she told her husband. "She would send her card and invitations to all those fine people, and they'd be glad enough to come. The Bankheads, too, and the Hamiltons, she would ask them."
"You are sure of them, at any rate," said her husband contemptuously. "Poor devils! it's not often they get such a supper as they'll get here."
But somehow the Hamiltons and Bankheads were not as hungry as Mr. Fairchild supposed, for very polite regrets came in the course of a few days, to Mrs. Fairchild's great wrath and mortification.
This was but the beginning, however. Refusals came pouring in thick and fast from all quarters.
The lights were prepared, the music sounding, and some half dozen ladies, whose husbands had occasionally a business transaction with Mr. Fairchild, looked in on their way to a grand fashionable party given the same evening by one of their own clique, and then vanished, leaving Mrs. Fairchild with the mortified wish that they had not come at all, to see the splendor of preparations and the beggary of guests. Some few young men dropped in and took a look, and bowed themselves out as soon as the Fairchilds gave them a chance; and so ended this last and most desperate effort.
"My dear," said Mrs. Fairchild one day to her husband in perfect desperation, "let us go to Europe."
"To Europe," he said, looking up in amazement.