Angel: A sketch in Indian inkCroker, B. M. (Bithia Mary)
History
Angel: A sketch in Indian ink
Croker, B. M. (Bithia Mary)
British -- India -- Fiction; India -- History -- British occupation, 1765-1947 -- Fiction
Lady Augusta was blessed with an iron constitution and the vigor of
perpetual youth; with her slender figure, well-poised head, and active
movements, she appeared at a little distance to be about thirty, albeit
the remorseless Peerage stated her years to be three-score. She wore
her clothes with grace, employed a French maid—well versed in "the
art of beauty"—and got all her gowns in Paris. She patronized the
turf, the theatre, and the most popular foreign Spas; her supper and
roulette parties were renowned. She carried on her correspondence by
telegram, and lived in a perpetual whirl. Her ladyship still retained
the remains of considerable beauty; her nose was delicately chiselled
(and came out well in her photographs); her eyes were blue, very
quick, and rather closely set together; her hair, which had once been
red, had faded to a pale sandy shade, and was marvellously crimped
and curled—and matched. She was exceedingly vivacious, cheery, and
popular, always well-dressed, always well posted in the earliest news,
the newest story, and the coming scandal, and men thronged around
Lady Augusta like flies about a pot of honey. She was constantly in
evidence; her comings and goings, her little dinners and race parties
were faithfully recorded. She was smart, her friends were smart, her
turn-out was smart, and when she appeared at church parade "wearing her
sables," or at the opera "wearing her diamonds," or merely driving down
Sloane Street with "a bunch of violets tucked into her coat," were not
all these doings chronicled in the Society papers?
Lady Augusta was thoroughly satisfied with her surroundings and
herself, and put all painful thoughts, such as the memory of her two
dead sons, far from her. She was entirely without heart or sympathy,
and turned her back on sickness, suffering, and all disagreeables. She
was quick to seize on, and enjoy, every passing pleasure, and declared
herself a philosopher—but people who disapproved of this callous and
volatile lady called her by another name.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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