A Waif's Progress by Rhoda Broughton — Read

In the height of a simoom it seems incredible that the face of Nature should ever recover from its distortion and resume its smiles and dimples, yet a few hours effect this marvellous restoration. In the case of the Stillington simoom it took less than a week to remove the more obvious signs of the devastation it had caused in its destructive passage. In less than a week the Aylmers had not only ceased to be the only subject of conversation, but by tacit consent had been banished from it as too painful a topic for even incidental allusion. In less than a week the distracted Toby, having thought better of -- if, indeed, he had ever really entertained the idea of -- self-slaughter, had actually set off on that globe-circling voyage which his cruel fair one had prescribed to him, and the rest of the Aylmer family were in mid-process of indignantly bundling out of the Dower House, to await inconveniently on the shores of the Riviera the completion of their rebuilding house.

"They are punishing themselves more than me," was Mrs. Tancred's sole comment upon the announcement that her quondam friends could no longer bear to lie under the obligation of a roof-tree to her. But Edward, conscious of the strong hold of habit upon his wife's mind, conscious also of her small power of making new friends, and of the tenacity with which she clung to ancient ties, recognized with pitying sorrow the cut which so painful and abrupt a severance of an old and pleasant relation gave her.