utes, then tossed off
her hat and automatically looked in the glass. The coils of her smooth
light-brown hair were still in order perfect enough for a ball-room;
and as on other nights, Gwendolen might have looked lingeringly at
herself for pleasure (surely an allowable indulgence); but now she took
no conscious note of her reflected beauty, and simply stared right
before her as if she had been jarred by a hateful sound and was waiting
for any sign of its cause. By-and-by she threw herself in the corner of
the red velvet sofa, took up the letter again and read it twice
deliberately, letting it at last fall on the ground, while she rested
her clasped hands on her lap and sat perfectly still, shedding no
tears. Her impulse was to survey and resist the situation rather than
to wail over it. There was no inward exclamation of "Poor mamma!" Her
mamma had never seemed to get much enjoyment out of life, and if
Gwendolen had been at this moment disposed to feel pity she would have
bestowed it on herself--for was she not naturally and rightfully the
chief object of her mamma's anxiety too? But it was anger, it was
resistance that possessed her; it was bitter vexation that she had lost
her gains at roulette, whereas if her luck had continued through this
one day she would have had a handsome sum to carry home, or she might
have gone on playing and won enough to support them all. Even now was
it not possible? She had only four napoleons left in her purse, but she
possessed some ornaments which she could sell: a practice so common in
stylish society at German baths that there was no need to be ashamed of
it; and even if she had not received her mamma's letter, she would
probably have decided to get money for an Etruscan necklace which she
happened not to have been wearing since her arrival; nay, she might
have done so with an agreeable sense that she was living with some
intensity and escaping humdrum. With ten louis at her disposal and a
return of her former luck, which seemed probable, what could she do
better than go on playing for a few days? If her friends at home
disapproved of the way in which she got the money, as they certainly
would, still the money would be there. Gwendolen's imagination dwelt on
this course and created agreeable consequences, but not with unbroken
confidence and rising certainty as it would have done if she had been
touched with the gambler's mania. She had gone to the roulette-table
not because of passi