Bella Donna eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 668 pages of information about Bella Donna.

Bella Donna eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 668 pages of information about Bella Donna.

It was now July.  The season would soon be over.  And his acquaintance with Mrs. Chepstow?  Would that be over too?  It might come to an end quite naturally.  He would go into the country, presently to Scotland for the shooting.  And she—­where would she go?  This question set him thinking, as often in these last days—­thinking about her loneliness, a condition exaggerated and underlined by her to make an impression on him.  She did not seem to dwell upon it.  She was far too clever for that.  But somehow it was always cropping up.  When he paid her a visit, she was scarcely ever out.  And if she was in, she was invariably alone.  Sometimes she wore a hat and said she had just come in.  Sometimes, when he left her, she would say she was going out.  But always the impression created was of a very lonely woman, with no engagements and apparently no friends, who passed the long summer days in solitude, playing—­generally “Gerontius”—­upon the little rosewood piano, or reading “The Scarlet Letter,” or some sad or high-minded book.  There was no pose apparent in all this.  Indeed, sometimes Mrs. Chepstow seemed slightly confused, almost ashamed, at being so unoccupied, so unclaimed by any society or any bright engagements.  And more than once Nigel suspected her of telling him white lies when she spoke of dining out with “people” in the evening, or of joining a “party” for the play.  For he noticed that when she made such statements it was generally after some remark, some little incident, which had indicated his pity.  And he divined the pride of a well-bred woman stirring within her, the desire to conceal or to make the least of her unfortunate situation.  Far from posing to gain his pity, he believed her to be “playing up,” if possible, to avoid it.  And this belief, not unnaturally, rendered it far more keen.  So he fell in with her intention.

Once or twice when, in mental colloquies, he played, as he supposed, the part of the ordinary man of the world arguing out the question with the impulsive, chivalrous man, he said, and insisted strongly, that a woman such as Mrs. Chepstow, justifiably famous for beauty and scandalously famous for very different reasons, if she sought to deceive—­and of course the man of the world thought such women compact of deception—­would try to increase her attraction by representing herself as courted, desired, feted, run after by men.  Such women always did that.  Never would she wish it to be known that she was undesired, that she was abandoned.  Men want what other men want.  But who wants the unwanted?  The fact that Mrs. Chepstow allowed him to see and to realize her solitude, so simply and so completely, proved to Nigel her almost unwise unworldliness.  The man of the world, so sceptical, was convinced.  And as to the enthusiast—­he bowed down.

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Project Gutenberg
Bella Donna from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.