In spite of the unusual number of social activities which had been arranged in honour of the return af the Countess Nattatorrini, so numerous, indeed, that often practically every hour of her day was engaged, she had not recovered the lost tranquillity which she had come to search. More than once she was on the point of packing her trunks and travelling back to Paris where at least she might conceivably pick up some news of Tony, or to China where there was some faint chance that she might forget him. She wavered, however, unable to make any decision. In the meantime letters began to arrive from abroad which served to remind her of the kind of life she would go back to, if she went back. Lady Adela Beaminster, for instance, wrote glowingly of the predicted splendour of London during the week of the Diamond Jubilee, and a vision of these stupid, solemn rites rose in Ella's mind: Piccadilly crowded with vehicles so that it would be impossible to drive anywhere without standing interminably in line, waiting one's turn, the heavy formality of the English drawing-rooms, the forbidding exclusiveness of the Duchess of Wrexe, so much more forbidding, so much more exclusive than
