As Rose Winter had said to Carleton, "Who _isn't_ Who, if they can play
bridge?" But it had been important for Lady Dauntrey's plans not to be
received on sufferance. She had meant and expected to be some one in
particular. In the South African past of which people here knew nothing,
but began to gossip much, it had been her dream to marry a man who could
lead her at once to the drawing-room floor of society, and she saw no
reason in herself why she should not be a shining light there. She knew
that she was handsome, and fascinating to men, and while using her gifts
as best she could, always she had burned with an almost fierce desire
to make more of them, to be a beauty and a social star, like those women
of whom she read in the "society columns" of month-old London papers,
women not half as attractive as she. She had felt in herself the
qualities necessary for success in a different world from any she had
known; and because, during a period when she was a touring actress she
had played the parts of great ladies, she had told herself confidently
that she would know without any other teaching how great ladies should
talk, behave, and dress.
"Who _was_ she?" people asked each other, of course, when she and her
husband appeared at Monte Carlo in the beginning of the season, and Lord
Dauntrey began quietly, unobtrusively, to remind old acquaintances of
his own or of his dead uncle's (the last viscount's) existence. Nobody
could answer that question; but "_What_ was she?" seemed simpler of
solution as a puzzle, at least in a negative way; for certainly she was
not a lady.
Pages:
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225