Humorous stories; London (England) -- Fiction; Lucia (Fictitious character) -- Fiction; Women -- England -- Fiction
She went upstairs again, and after a little deep breathing and bathing
her feet in alternate applications of hot and cold water in order to
produce somnolence, found herself more widely awake than ever. Her
well-trained mind cantered about on scents that led nowhere, and she was
unable to find any that seemed likely to lead anywhere. Of Lucia nothing
whatever was known except what was accessible to anybody who spent a
penny on the _Evening Gazette_. She had written to nobody, she had given
no sign of any sort, and, but for the _Evening Gazette_, she might, as
far as Riseholme was concerned, be dead. But the _Evening Gazette_
showed that she was alive, painfully alive in fact, if Hermione could be
trusted. She had been seen here, there, and everywhere in London:
Hermione had observed her chatting in the Park with friends, sitting
with friends in her box at the opera, shopping in Bond Street, watching
polo (why, she did not know a horse from a cow!) at Hurlingham, and even
in a punt at Henley. She had been entertaining in her own house too:
there had been dinner-parties and musical parties, and she had dined at
so many houses that Daisy had added them all up, hoping to prove that
she had spent more evenings than there had been evenings to spend, but
to her great regret they came out exactly right. Now she was having her
portrait painted by Sigismund, and not a word had she written, not a
glimpse of herself had she vouchsafed, to Riseholme.... Of course
Georgie had seen her, when he went up to stay with Olga, but his account
of her had been far from reassuring. She had said that she did not care
how tired she got while Pepino was enjoying London so tremendously. Why
then, thought Daisy with a sense of incredulous indignation, had Pepino
come down a few Sundays ago, all by himself, and looking a perfect
wreck?... “Very odd, _I_ call it,” muttered Daisy, turning over to her
other side.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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