England -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction; Social classes -- England -- Fiction
Dorothy indulged her own renewed _joie de vivre_ by investigating the
glimpse of her father's private _joie de vivre_ vouchsafed to her that
night in St. John's Wood, and without much difficulty she found out that
for the last two years he had been maintaining there a second
establishment, which at the very lowest calculation must be costing him
£400 a year. It was not remarkable that he had wanted to obtain a higher
rate of interest on his wife's capital. His daughter debated with
herself how to play this unusual hand, and she decided not to lead these
black trumps too soon, but to reserve them for the time when they might
threaten her ace of hearts and that long suit of diamonds. At present
she was not suffering the least inconvenience from her family, and since
she went to live in Halfmoon Street it had not been her habit to visit
Lonsdale Road more often than once a month. These visits, rare as winter
sunshine in England, were not much warmer: the family basked for a while
in the radiance of Dorothy's rich clothes, but they soon found that
clothes only give heat to the person who wears them, and since Dorothy
did not encourage them to follow the sun like visitors to the azure
coast, they made the best of their own fireside and avoided any risk of
taking cold by depending too much on her deceptive radiance.
Meanwhile, Hausberg had turned Dorothy's £250 into £500 by nothing more
compromising than good advice; and by March, to celebrate her
twenty-first birthday, the £500 had become £2,000. Not even then did
Hausberg ask anything from her in return; occasionally a dim suspicion
crossed her mind that a profound cause must lie underneath this display
of good will, and she asked herself if he was patiently, very patiently,
angling for her; but when time went by without his striking, the
suspicions died away and did not recur. Moreover, her financial adviser
was engaged in dazzling Queenie Molyneux with diamonds, to the manifest
chagrin of Lonsdale, who had let the liaison between himself and Queenie
come to mean much more to him than he had ever intended that evening at
the Savoy. In the end his mistress was so much dazzled by the diamonds
that she put on rose-colored spectacles to save her eyes and, looking
through them at Hausberg, decided to accept his devotion. Lonsdale took
the theft of his love hardly; whatever chance he might have had of
entering the Foreign Office disappeared under an emotional strain that
in so round and pink a young man was nearly grotesque. This seemed to
Dorothy a suitable moment to repay evil with good, and when, shortly
afterward, she saw the disconsolate lover gloomily contemplating a
half-bottle of Pol Roger '98 on a solitary table at the Savoy she went
over to him and offered to be reconciled.
He squeezed Dorothy's hand gratefully, sighed, and shook his head.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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