Sink or Swim? , Volume III by Matilda Charlotte Houstoun

The merrie month of May was speeding onward, and with it -- fast and / furious -- rattling over stones, and dashing over impediments, ran the / fierce strong current of "London life. " There is an intoxicating / influence, especially on the inexperienced, in the rapid motion, the / ever-changing aspect of pleasure, the atmosphere redolent of poisonous / influences, that is breathed by the upper ten thousand in the month of / May, in busy, half-mad London. By none was this insidious influence more / perilously undergone than by the impressionable, weak-nerved woman who, / through her own folly, considerably aided by "circumstances over which / she had no control," was standing on the very brink of the abyss, the / name of which is "ruin."

It was now the middle of May, and during a swiftly-passing fortnight / Honor Beacham, continuing her course of semi-deception regarding her / father's condition, and entirely concealing from the husband whom she / believed to be exclusively absorbed in his own pursuits and interests / the fact that her days and nights were spent in one continued round of / exciting pleasure, went on her way -- if not rejoicing, at least in a / condition of such delightful mental inebriation, that she found barely / sense or time enough to ask herself the serious question, if the life / which she was leading indeed were joy.

John's answer to her letter, written under the influence of hurt / feeling, and penned by a man utterly destitute, not only of the art to / make a thing appear the thing it is not, but of _l'eloquence du billet_ / in general, was one exactly calculated to rouse in a high-spirited / nature a dormant inclination to rebel. In it there was an implied right / to command, a right solely arrogated (to Honor's thinking) by reason of / the writer's indifference to her proceedings, and scanty appreciation of / her merits. "You will come back, I suppose," -- so wrote the unwise man, / who, on his side, had so egregiously erred in his estimate of / character, -- "you will come back when you have had enough of London. I / don't say to you, ‘come home,' for women that are made to do the thing / they don't like are, as mother says, not over and above pleasant in a / house. We are uncommon busy, too, just now; there is painting to be / done, and the chintz to be calendered, so perhaps you are as well out of / the way of the bother."

Poor John! Could Honor have heard the heavy sigh that broke from his / full heart as he closed the letter; could she, above all, have looked / into that heart and read its secret sorrows, she could not have doubted / of her husband's love; and perhaps, removed from the glamour of Arthur / Vavasour's presence, from the mesmeric influence of a passion which was / becoming terribly overpowering in its hourly-gathering strength, she / might have been again a happy woman in the simple fashion and the humble / sphere to which she had been brought up. Such a "chance," however, was / not for the foolish, beautiful woman who, with half-tender words (for, / alas, it had come to that) from her high-bred adorer lingering on her / memory, read the simple letter, which it had cost so much pain to write, / in anger and in bitterness. Tossing it on her toilet-table with an / impatient jerk, she told herself that John did not care for her. It was / nothing to him, she said mentally, whether she stayed away or not; but / as she inly spoke the words, the fingers of her little gauntleted / hand -- she had just returned from riding in the Park -- dashed away / something very like tears that had gathered on her long lashes and / nothing short of the recollection that she was going in a few hours' / time to dine at Richmond with Arthur Vavasour and a few other friends of / her father's prevented her (for it would be dreadful to make her / appearance with red eyes) from indulging in the luxury of a "good cry."

That party to London's prettiest suburb -- an evening's enjoyment which / was to include a row towards Twickenham and Teddington on the clear, / flowing river, and a delicious dinner after dusk in one of the charming / _cabinet particuliers_ appertaining to the Star and Garter, and opening / on its pleasant gardens, had been for days looked forward to with keen / anticipations of delight by Honor Beacham. They were to proceed thither / in two open "_hired_ carriages," in one of which was to be seated Honor / and the Colonel's wife, while Arthur Vavasour and a dull, unobservant / Mr. Foley, a gentleman, like Pope's women, "with no character at all," / were to occupy the opposite seats. In the second carriage the party / collected was likely to be of a far more noisy, as well as a more / congenial, description. Mrs. Foley -- a lady a little on the wrong side of / thirty, and whose animal spirits, being apt occasionally, as the saying / is, to "get the better of her," were in their full swing of triumph on / such an occasion as a Richmond dinner -- arrived at Stanwick-street / punctually as the clock struck four, arrayed in a toilet which, but for / the still more amazing costume of the young lady with whom she was / accompanied, would have decidedly monopolised the attention and wonder / of every female observer in that quiet neighbourhood. Shaking themselves / clear of the straw and _tumble_, consequent on their cab-drive from some / distant locality, Mrs. Foley and her bright-eyed sister Dora Tibbets / stood on the doorsteps of No. 14, laughing noisily -- more noisily than / ladies of their stamp often laugh when no one of the male sex is present / to stir their spirits up to boiling point. Their dresses, as they stood / there in the bright sunshine of a May afternoon, were of the kind better / suited to a wedding breakfast than to a "quiet dinner," as Fred Norcott / had described it, in the country.