Confessions of a Well-Meaning Woman
too expensive for us. One grows, indeed, to love one’s own vine and fig-tree, and the place was filled with associations. Did I ever tell you that the princess was good enough to say that, in coming there, she always felt she was coming home? . . . With Will gone, the place is a white elephant; and I cannot flatter myself that any little niche I may occupy makes me indispensable to the life of London. When people talk about inconsistency, they fancy a change in you, but it doesn’t occur to them that the world all round you may have changed. I had long contemplated radical alterations and was only perplexed to know where to begin.
Our thoughts had all been turned for the moment from our own affairs by the romance of my dear niece Phyllida’s engagement to Colonel Butler. Alas! when we came back to London, it was to find what I then regarded as a sword still suspended over our heads, still hanging by a hair. Since the night when Sir Appleton Deepe dined with us to discuss the appointment for Will, this girl Molly Phenton had not been near the house. For a week before that she had been calling, waiting, writing—always protesting that my boy had given her a promise of marriage. As it was impossible for them to marry without money, I refused to believe that Will had
281
