This lady
had gone to bed and stopped there for a month at the end of Sir Henry's
year of office, in sheer chagrin that "Othello's occupation" was gone,
and her crown of glory set upon another's head, while she must retire to
the obscurity of Bayswater. Being threatened with acute melancholia, a
specialist had advised a change of air; and Lady Meason had begun once
more to blossom like a rose--of the fully developed, cabbage order--in
the joy of being "one of the most notable, popular and successful
hostesses of the season at Mentone." She had bought several hundred
copies of a Riviera paper which described her in this manner, and sent
them to all the people who had cooled to her at the end of Sir Henry's
Great Year; and living on her new reputation, she gave each week at her
handsome villa two large luncheons, one small and select dinner where no
untitled person was invited, and a huge Saturday afternoon tea at the
Mentone Casino, with a variety entertainment thrown in. She had rented a
villa last occupied by a notorious semi-royal personage, and engaged at
great expense one of the best _chefs_ to be had on the Riviera; had
indeed, figuratively speaking, snapped him out of the mouth of a duke;
and somehow, no one quite knew how, had succeeded, after nerve-racking
efforts, in capturing a few of the bright, particular stars whose light
really counted in the social illumination of the Riviera. To get them in
the first instance, she had been obliged to give a dance, and to offer
cotillon favours worth at least five hundred francs each; and these
things had been alluringly displayed in a fashionable jeweller's window
for a week before the entertainment, just at the time when people were
making up their minds whether or not to accept "that weird creature's"
invitations.
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