The Londoners by Robert Hichens

Mrs. Verulam came into her drawing-room slowly and rather wearily. It was a sultry afternoon in May -- indeed, the papers were quite in a ferment about the exceptional heat-wave that was passing over London; and a premature old General, anxious apparently to be up to time, had just died of tropical apoplexy in Park Lane. Possibly it was the weather that had painted the pallor on Mrs. Verulam's exceedingly pretty face. Beneath her mist of yellow hair her dark-grey eyes looked out pathetically, with the sort of pathos that means nothing in particular -- the grace of an indefinite sorrow. She was clad in a pale-pink tea-gown, elaborately embroidered in dull green and gold, and she was followed by her maid, the faithful Marriner, whose hands were full of bright-coloured cushions. The windows of the drawing-room, which faced Park Lane, and commanded a distant view of the Parade on Sunday mornings, stood open, and striped awnings defied the sunbeams above them. London hummed gently in the heat; and an Admiral in the next house but one might almost be heard ordering his valet, with many terrible expressions of the sea, to get out his ducks, and be quick about it.

"Oh, Marriner! " said Mrs. Verulam, in the voice which all self-respecting men worshipped and compared with Sarah Bernhardt's -- "oh, Marriner, how terribly hot it is!"