It was very
heavenly to stand there and feel the cool, soft air--unaccompanied,
for the first time during the day, by the rattling rumbling sounds of
locomotion and the jarring discordant murmurs of unmusical
voices--fanning her neck and face.
Lady Adela, used as she was to the privacy of her yacht, and the
freedom of her big country mansion, where all sounds were regulated at
her will, chafed at the near proximity of her present habitation to
the noisy thoroughfare, and vaguely looked forward to the hours when
shops and theatres were closed, and all screeching, harsh-voiced
products of the gutter were in bed. To her the nights in Waterloo
Place were all too short; the days too long, too long for anything.
The heavy, lumbering steps of a policeman at last broke her reverie.
She had no desire to arouse his curiosity; besides, her costume had
become somewhat disordered, and she had the strictest sense of
propriety, at least in the presence of the lower orders. Retiring,
therefore, with a sigh of vexation, she sought her bedroom, and, after
the most scrupulous attention to her toilet, put out the lights and
got into bed. It was just one when she fell asleep, and three when she
awoke with a violent start. Why she started puzzled her. She did not
recollect experiencing any very dreadful dream, in fact no dream at
all, and there seemed nothing in the hush--the apparently unbroken
hush--that could in any way account for her action. Why, then, had she
started? She lay still and wondered.
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