"I am certainly a brilliant illustration of the saying that there is
no fool like an old fool," she said to herself as the night wore on,
and the strange sensation of pain and loss which Preston Cheney's
unexpected announcement had caused her gnawed at her breast like a
rat in a wainscot.
That she had been unusually interested in the young editor she knew
from the first; that she had been mortally wounded by Cupid's shaft
she only now discovered. She had passed through a divorce, two
"affairs" and a legitimate widowhood, without feeling any of the keen
emotions which now drove sleep from her eyes. A long time ago,
longer than she cared to remember, she had experienced such emotions,
but she had supposed such folly only possible in the high tide of
early youth. It was absurd, nay more, it was ridiculous to lie awake
at her time of life thinking about a penniless country youth whose
mother she might almost have been. In this bitterly frank fashion
the Baroness reasoned with herself as she lay quite still in her
luxurious bed, and tried to sleep.
Yet despite her frankness, her philosophy and her reasoning, the
rasping hurt at her heart remained--a hurt so cruel it seemed to her
the end of all peace or pleasure in life.
It is harder to bear the suffocating heat of a late September day
which the year sometimes brings, than all the burning June suns.
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