Why, of course it is amusing to be free. And I am _not_ grieving
over Mrs. Carruthers’ death--only perhaps I am lonely, and I wish
I were at the theatre. No, I don’t--I--oh, the thing I do wish is
that--that--_No_, I won’t write it even.
Good-night, Journal!
300, PARK STREET,
_Wednesday November 23rd._
OH! how silly to want the moon! but that is evidently what is the
matter with me. Here I am in a comfortable house with a kind hostess,
and no immediate want of money, and yet I am restless, and sometimes
unhappy.
For the four days since I arrived Lady Ver has been so kind to me,
taken the greatest pains to try and amuse me, and cheer me up. We
have driven about in her electric brougham and shopped, and agreeable
people have been to lunch each day, and I have had what I suppose is a
_succès_. At least she says so.
I am beginning to understand things better, and it seems one must have
no real feelings, just as Mrs. Carruthers always told me, if one wants
to enjoy life.
On two evenings Lady Ver has been out with numbers of regrets at
leaving me behind, and I have gathered she has seen Lord Robert, but he
has not been here--I am glad to say.
I am real friends with the angels, who are delightful people, and very
well brought up. Lady Ver evidently knows much better about it than
Mary Mackintosh, although she does not talk in that way.
I can’t think what I am going to do next. I suppose soon this kind of
drifting will seem quite natural, but at present the position galls
me for some reason. I _hate_ to think people are being kind out of
charity. How very foolish of me, though!
Lady Merrenden is coming to lunch to-morrow. I am interested to see
her, because Lord Robert said she was such a dear. I wonder what has
become of him, that he has not been here--I wonder. No, I am _too_
silly.
Lady Ver does not get up to breakfast, and I go into her room, and have
mine on another little tray, and we talk, and she reads me bits out of
her letters.
She seems to have a number of people in love with her--that must be
nice.
“It keeps Charlie always devoted,” she said, “because he realizes he
owns what the other men want.”
She says, too, that all male creatures are fighters by nature, they
don’t value things they obtain easily, and which are no trouble to
keep. You must always make them realize you will be off like a snipe if
they relax their efforts to please you for one moment.
Of course there are heaps of humdrum ways of living, where the husband
is quite fond, but it does not make his heart beat, and Lady Ver says
she couldn’t stay on with a man whose heart she couldn’t make beat when
she wanted to.