Read "The White Countess" by Florence Warden online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
It was one of the terrible evenings which Audrey had begun to hate, pleasant though every one tried to make them to her. The guests were lively and bright, always complimentary and sympathetic to herself, and observant of the rules of decorum in her presence, however high the play might be in the next room. They even broke up earlier now than they had done at first, and before one o'clock they were all gone.
Audrey, however, was restless, ill at ease, full of vain longings for another sight of her husband's face, and unable to sleep for the dreams in which she saw again, as she had seen that afternoon, the pitiful, white, drawn features, the sad, sunken eyes, or else the transformed, flushed countenance and brilliant, almost feverish eyes which had looked into hers and told her more plainly than he could with his lips that he had loved her and longed for her as she had for him.