erish and trumpery reflection at
Frampton Court, was neither equipped nor disposed to be hypercritical in
the first hours of her debut there; and at any other time, in any other
temper, she knew, she must have been swept off her feet by its exciting
appeal to her innate love of luxury and sensation. But the sad truth was,
it all seemed to her unillusioned vision an elaborate sham built up of
tinsel, paste, and paint; and the warmth of her welcome at the hands,
indeed in the very arms, of Lady Randolph West, and the success her youth
and beauty scored for her--commanding in all envy, admiration, cupidity, or
jealousy, according to age, sex, and temporal state of servitude--did
nothing to mitigate the harshness of those first impressions.

If anything her depression grew more perversely morbid the more she was
catered to, courted, flattered, and cajoled. Something had happened, she
could never guess what, perhaps some mysterious reaction effected through
the chemistry of last night's slumber, to turn her vivid zest in life to
ashes in her mouth, so that nothing seemed to matter any more.

Thoughts of Karslake as her lover, recollection of her first deep joy in
his avowal and her subsequent passion of shame and regret, re-perusal of
his note, that last night had seemed so sweet a thing, precious beyond
compare--found her indifferent to-day, and left her so. Try as she would,
she failed to recapture any sense of the reality of those first raptures.
And yet, somehow, she didn't doubt he loved her or that, buried deep
beneath this inexplicable apathy, love for Karslake burned on in her heart;
but she knew no sort of comfort in such confidence, their love seemed as
remote and immaterial an issue as the menu for day after to-morrow's
dinner. Nothing mattered!

She was able even to meet Prince Victor without her customary shiver of
aversion; and when she recalled the persistence and enthusiasm with which
she had reasoned herself into believing, last night, that he might be
another than her father, she came as near to mirth as she was to come that
day; but it was mirth bitter with self-derision. Of course he was her
father, she had been a ninny ever to dream contrariwise, or that it
mattered.

Nor had she met with more success in efforts to find a cause for this drab
humour; unless, indeed, it were simply the farthest swing of the pendulum
from yesterday's emotional crises, a long swing out of sunlit spaces swept
by the brave