The
flower, fragile with age, seemed a sort of scrub poppy of a
delicate yellow; the flower of some dwarfed bush, prickly like a
cactus.
The necklace made a great heap of jewels on the buhl top of the
table, above the intricate arabesque of silver and
tortoise-shell.
It was nearly midnight. Outside, the dull rumble of London
seemed a sound, continuous, unvarying, as though it were the
distant roar of a world turning in some stellar space.
It was a great old house in Park Lane, heavy and of that gloomy
architecture with which the feeling of the English people, at an
earlier time, had been so strangely in accord. It stood before
St. James's Park oppressive and monumental, and now in the midst
of yellow fog its heavy front was like a mausoleum.
But within, the house had been treated to a modern re-casting,
not entirely independent of the vanity of wealth.
After the dinner at the Ritz, the girl felt that she could not go
on; and Lady Mary's party, on its way to the dancing, put her
down at the door. She gave the excuse of a crippling headache.
But it was a deeper, more profound aching that disturbed her.
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