England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Love stories; Marriage -- Fiction
Then the sandman paid his visit, and she slept like the tired child
that she was, having completed to her entire satisfaction another day
of what, when you come to think of it, was nothing more or less than
an utterly idle, selfish, unprofitable existence.
CHAPTER ELEVEN.
DIES IRAE.
At Belton, Daphne, like her Scriptural counterpart, came to herself.
Attired in what she called "rags," she ran wild about the woods and
plantations, accompanied by the faithful Mr Dawks, who found a green
countryside (even when marred at intervals by a grimy pithead)
infinitely preferable to Piccadilly, where the pavement is hot and
steerage-way precarious.
They were to stay at Belton till Christmas, after which the house in
Berkeley Square would be ready for her. Hitherto she had been well
content with the little establishment in Grosvenor Street; but her
ideas in certain directions, as her husband had observed to Mrs
Carfrae, were developing in a very gratifying manner.
One hot morning Daphne arrived at breakfast half-an-hour late. To do
her justice, this was an unusual fault; for in the country she would
never have dreamed of indulging in such an urban luxury as breakfast
in bed. Her unpunctuality was not due to sloth. She had already
superintended the morning toilet of Master Brian Vereker Carr, and had
even taken a constitutional with Mr Dawks along the road which ran
over the shoulder of a green hill towards Belton Pit, two miles away.
She knew that her husband had gone out at seven o'clock to interview
the manager at the pithead, and she had reckoned on being picked up by
the returning motor and brought home in time for nine o'clock
breakfast. Unfortunately Juggernaut had changed his plans and gone to
another pit in the opposite direction, with the result that Daphne,
besides being compelled to walk twice as far as she intended, found an
uncomfortable combination of cold food and chilly husband waiting for
her when she reached home.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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