A House-Party Part 34

We are to leave for Paris and Trouville to-morrow. I have yielded, as you and mamma seemed to think it was my _duty_ to do. But my life is over. I shall say farewell to all happiness when the gates of Coombe-Bysset close upon me. Henceforth we shall be like everybody else.

However, you cannot reproach me any longer with being selfish, nor can he. There is a great friend of his, the d.u.c.h.ess of Aquila Fulva, at Trouville. She writes to him very often, I know. He never offers to show me her letters. _I believe the choice of Trouville is her doing._ Write to me at Paris, at The Windsor.

_From the Lady Gwendolen Chichester, St. Petersburg, to the Princess di San Zenone, Hotel Windsor, Paris._

MY POOR CHILD!--

Has the green-eyed monster already invaded your gentle soul because he doesn't show you his own letters? My dear, no man who was not born a _our_ would show a woman's letters to his wife. Surely you wish your hero to know the A, B, C of gentle manners! I am delighted you are going into the world; but if you only go as "a duty" I am afraid the results won't be suns.h.i.+ny. "Duty" is such a _very_ disagreeable thing. It always rolls itself up like a hedgehog, with all its p.r.i.c.kles out, turning forever round and round on the axle of its own self-admiration. If you go to Trouville, and wherever else you do go, _en martyr_, my dear, you will give the mischievous d.u.c.h.ess, if she be mischievous, a terrible advantage over you at starting. If you mean to be silent, unpleasant, and enwrapped in a gloomy contemplation of your own merits and wrongs, don't blame _him_ if he spend his time at the Casino with his friend, or somebody worse. I am quite sure you _mean_ to be unselfish, and you fancy you are so, and all the rest of it, quite honestly; but, in real truth, as I told you before, you are only an egotist. You would rather keep this unhappy Piero on thorns beside you than see him enjoy himself with other people. Now, I call that shockingly selfish; and if you go in that spirit to Trouville he will soon begin to wish, my dear child, that he had never had a fancy to come over to a London season. I can see you so exactly! Too dignified to be cross, too offended to be companionable; silent, reproachful, terrible!

_From the Lady Mary Bruton, Roches Noires, Trouville, to Mrs. D'Arcy, British Emba.s.sy, Berlin._

July 15th.

... Among the new arrivals here are the San Zenone. You remember my telling you of their marriage some six weeks ago. It was quite _the_ marriage of the season. They really were immensely in love with each other, but that stupid month down in the country has done its usual work. In a rainy June, too! Of course any poor Amorina would emerge from his captivity bedraggled, dripping, and disenchanted. She is really very pretty,--quite lovely, indeed,--but she looks fretful and dull; her handsome husband, on the contrary, is as gay as a lark which has found the door of its cage wide open one morning. There is here a great friend of his, a d.u.c.h.essa dell'Aquila Fulva. _She_ is very gay too; she is always perfectly dressed, and chattering from morning to night in shrill Italian or voluble French. She is the cynosure of all eyes as she goes to swim in a rose-colored _maillot_, with an orange-and-gold Eastern burnous flung about her artistically. She has that wonderful Venetian coloring which can stand a contrast and glow of color which would simply kill any other woman. She is very tall, and magnificently made, and yet uncommonly graceful. Last night she was persuaded to dance a _salterello_ with San Zenone at the Maison Persane, and it was marvellous. They are both such handsome people, and threw such wonderful _brio_, as they would call it, into the affair. The poor little, pretty princess, looking as fair and as dull as a primrose in a shower, sat looking on dismally. Stupid little thing!--as if _that_ would do her any good! A few days ago Lord Hamps.h.i.+re arrived off here in his yacht. He was present at the _salterello_, and as I saw him out in the gardens afterwards with the neglected one, sitting beside her in the moonlight, I presume he was offering her sympathy and consolation. He is a heavy young fellow, but exceedingly good-humored and kind-hearted. _He_ would have been in heaven in the wet June at Coombe-Bysset; but she refused him, silly little thing! I am quite angry with her: she has had her own way, and she won't make the best of that. I met her and her rejected admirer riding together this morning towards Villerville, while the beautiful prince was splas.h.i.+ng about in the water with his Venetian friend. I see a great many eventual complications ahead. Well, they will all be the fault of that Rainy June!