Free The Diamond Waterfall by Pamela Haines Page A

perhaps?”
    What? What idea? She scarcely heard in her humiliation. She could only think, Everybody knows. They will all have read
The Times,
the
Morning Post
They will know. I am humiliated.
    Yet all was glitter in this room, as it had been glitter two months ago when she had been so happy. The Savoy again, but this time a private room for their, quite large, party. Twelve people. Everywhere masses of hateful chrysanthemums. Everywhere extravagances of decor, ordered no doubt by Lionel, whose party it was.
    He was giving the party for his brother, visiting London again now, at the end of the summer. Lionel, in his bright red cummerbund. Ah yes, he knows, she thought; and I don’t trust him not to suddenly humiliate me further—to send some remark flying the length of the table. The image of the newspaper burned behind her eyes, pricking them. This very morning, the Court and Personal column of
The Times:
    An engagement is announced between the Viscount Tristram, son of the late Viscount Matthew Tristram and Mary, Viscountess Tristram, and Miss Augusta Mayhew, only daughter of Sir …
    She had not been able to read on. Just thinking about it now made her tilt her chin higher. She tried to change the anxiety in her eyes to a proud gleam.
I do not care.
    â€œMiss Greene, I know I sound like a deuced newspaper reporter”—there was the Honorable Freddie Moore, leaning forward eagerly, his turn to speak to her (it could not be about that; it must not be)—“is it true that George Edwardes is after you, and means you to star in his next…. The thing is that I should so like to be the first to know, officially.”
    I do not care.
    She had read the announcement alone in her bedroom over breakfast. At first, she hadn’t believed it. She peered more closely. The name could be mistaken, but—no, it was
not
a mistake. And
who was she?
Miss Augusta Mayhew. Some little girl …
    She had sat there, disbelief, anger, and humiliation struggling inside her. Her heart: she felt as if it had barely room to beat. I expect a letter, she thought. He will write, surely. Or he has written and I have not received it. Perhaps he will even write and say that he knows nothing of it—that it is the Mayhews, Augusta’s family, who have announced a marriage. She had heard of such mistakes. Only recently—a prank played on some young man by his friends. An enemy, too, could do it. Soon perhaps there would be another announcement. And in it the wonderful words “… will not now take place.”
    Then the fresh waves of humiliation: “…
will not now take place.”
But it is Lily Greenwood, shopkeeper’s daughter, it is
my
wedding which will not take place. The pain was such that in her anger she could not remember how much, or even if, she had loved Edmund. The image of his face flashed past and together with it all the days of early summer, Jubilee summer. Of happiness. Of being wanted. She had been secure in her hopes. He had promised, had he not? But then—not exactly …
    But perhaps exactly enough? Still in her wrap, she had hurried over to the drawer where the letters were kept. They were tied with white ribbon, as if, she thought contemptuously, I were a silly young girl.
    They hurt. How they hurt. But trying to calm herself, she thought, I’ll read them through now a second time, but as though written to someone else. Her head was suddenly hard. Dad’s daughter.
    The letters, they showed a progress through that summer, marking the enchanted moments, the highlights, where pride and vanity could not now be separated from notions of love. She tried to tell herself now, It is only my pride. But then she thought, I have a right to that pride. I have earned it….
    Each letter, and how many there seemed now, for she had kept each note, even the hastiest (“half-past 2 A.M…. Dearest, I have been away from you only fifteen minutes and already I am