Free The Bohemian Girl by Frances Vernon

pictured herself going to Mr Sherlock Holmes in Baker Street. She saw herself explaining that she did not want to bring any case, or do anything at all: that she only wanted to know perfectly, exactly, whether the actress was in fact technically virtuous, for that would make a very great difference to the Blenthams and Society. Female unchastity did not so much shock Angelina as fill her with shivering rage. She knew she ought not to abominate others’ vice quite so intensely, and she made resentful apologies for her intensity in church.
    Flushed at the thought of her own nonsensical fantasy about detectives, Lady Blentham turned to Diana and said: ‘Thank you for sitting with me, Diana. Now – do go back to Mademoiselle, please darling! I’m sure she’s in the blue room, and will provide you with something to do.’
    Diana jumped up and murmured a cross, ‘Very well, Mamma.’
    Her mother did not correct her, and when the door shut behind her daughter with rude slowness, she got up herself, went through to the bedroom and looked down at her wide stiff bed. Suddenly, as she stood there, Angelina no longer felt tired or cursed by the world. She had work to do in crushing a scandal. She would not crush a person, that would be unkind.
    Diana’s irritation and disappointment lasted only till she reached the top of the main stairs and sat down. She had no intention of going to the improvised schoolroom where Mademoiselle lived: she hoped none of the maids would discover her here, and make a sympathetic nuisance of herself. Diana glanced at the roof-window above her, and noticed that the rain was over, and that dark but very clear yellow sunlight was striking through the filthy glass. Her face was warmed by it.
    Although she so longed to come out into Society and cease to be an innocent, Diana had until today thought she was weary of life itself, sceptical of all she was told though she had little material with which to fight it. Now, Diana thought, it was rather nice to discover that one was still truly young, and had ideals, ambitions, curiosity and enthusiasm for unconventional things; and she even wondered how many other possessing states of mind might turn out to be as unreal as the cynicism of clever sixteen.

CHAPTER 4
AT THE QUEEN’S DRAWING-ROOM, AND IN ROTTEN ROW
    Diana was standing in a crowd of other debutantes and chaperones, some twelve feet past the top of the stairs. For the second time since her arrival at Buckingham Palace, she allowed herself to look about her instead of merely peering ahead, and she turned her face carefully to avoid disarranging her headdress. She could see nothing but women dressed exactly as she was, shafts of unflattering daylight, and details of decoration much like that of a new hotel. Diana took a deep breath, and looked down at her corsage.
    She wore an evening dress of cream silk so deep in colour it was almost yellow, with short puffed sleeves, a low neck, and a trimming of seed pearls. A three-yard-long train lay over her arm, and a white veil hung down her back, pinned to her head by three little ostrich plumes. Her dress was new, but the feathers, train and veil had been worn both by Violet and by Maud.
    Diana had not lost her looks in the past year, as she and Lady Blentham had once feared she would, but she was a handsome girl rather than a beauty. She was five feet nine inches tall, with wide rounded shoulders, a deep bosom, a long waist, and legs and arms like well-turned columns. During the last few months, she had grown an inch and had put on weight, though her mother had frowned on this.
    Her long sloping neck was perfect, and so was the classical nose which she had inherited from her mother, but Diana’s other beauties were more original. Her eyes were oval and full-lidded, and their irises were a rare, deep auburn brown, rimmed with a line of black. When she smiled, the outercorners of her eyes dipped downwards in two odd little wrinkles. She had straight,