The Way We Live Now, Anthony Trollope [good story books to read .txt] 📗

dispensed champagne and smiles, and made everybody, including herself, believe that she was in love with her husband. Lady Monogram had climbed to the top of the tree, and in that position had been, of course, invaluable to her old friend. We must give her her due and say that she had been fairly true to friendship while Georgiana⁠—behaved herself. She thought that Georgiana in going to the Melmottes had⁠—not behaved herself, and therefore she had determined to drop Georgiana. “Heartless, false, purse-proud creature,” Georgiana said to herself as she wrote the following letter in humiliating agony.

Dear Lady Monogram,

I think you hardly understand my position. Of course you have cut me. Haven’t you? And of course I must feel it very much. You did not use to be ill-natured, and I hardly think you can have become so now when you have everything pleasant around you. I do not think that I have done anything that should make an old friend treat me in this way, and therefore I write to ask you to let me see you. Of course it is because I am staying here. You know me well enough to be sure that it can’t be my own choice. Papa arranged it all. If there is anything against these people, I suppose papa does not know it. Of course they are not nice. Of course they are not like anything that I have been used to. But when papa told me that the house in Bruton Street was to be shut up and that I was to come here, of course I did as I was bid. I don’t think an old friend like you, whom I have always liked more than anybody else, ought to cut me for it. It’s not about the parties, but about yourself that I mind. I don’t ask you to come here, but if you will see me I can have the carriage and will go to you.

Yours, as ever,

Georgiana Longestaffe.

It was a troublesome letter to get written. Lady Monogram was her junior in age and had once been lower than herself in social position. In the early days of their friendship she had sometimes domineered over Julia Triplex, and had been entreated by Julia, in reference to balls here and routes there. The great Monogram marriage had been accomplished very suddenly, and had taken place⁠—exalting Julia very high⁠—just as Georgiana was beginning to allow her aspirations to descend. It was in that very season that she moved her castle in the air from the Upper to the Lower House. And now she was absolutely begging for notice, and praying that she might not be cut! She sent her letter by post and on the following day received a reply, which was left by a footman.

Dear Georgiana,

Of course I shall be delighted to see you. I don’t know what you mean by cutting. I never cut anybody. We happen to have got into different sets, but that is not my fault. Sir Damask won’t let me call on the Melmottes. I can’t help that. You wouldn’t have me go where he tells me not. I don’t know anything about them myself, except that I did go to their ball. But everybody knows that’s different. I shall be at home all tomorrow till three⁠—that is today I mean, for I’m writing after coming home from Lady Killarney’s ball; but if you wish to see me alone you had better come before lunch.

Yours affectionately,

J. Monogram.

Georgiana condescended to borrow the carriage and reached her friend’s house a little after noon. The two ladies kissed each other when they met⁠—of course, and then Miss Longestaffe at once began. “Julia, I did think that you would at any rate have asked me to your second ball.”

“Of course you would have been asked if you had been up in Bruton Street. You know that as well as I do. It would have been a matter of course.”

“What difference does a house make?”

“But the people in a house make a great deal of difference, my dear. I don’t want to quarrel with you, my dear; but I can’t know the Melmottes.”

“Who asks you?”

“You are with them.”

“Do you mean to say that you can’t ask anybody to your house without asking everybody that lives with that person? It’s done every day.”

“Somebody must have brought you.”

“I would have come with the Primeros, Julia.”

“I couldn’t do it. I asked Damask and he wouldn’t have it. When that great affair was going on in February, we didn’t know much about the people. I was told that everybody was going and therefore I got Sir Damask to let me go. He says now that he won’t let me know them; and after having been at their house I can’t ask you out of it, without asking them too.”

“I don’t see it at all, Julia.”

“I’m very sorry, my dear, but I can’t go against my husband.”

“Everybody goes to their house,” said Georgiana, pleading her cause to the best of her ability. “The Duchess of Stevenage has dined in Grosvenor Square since I have been there.”

“We all know what that means,” replied Lady Monogram.

“And people are giving their eyes to be asked to the dinner party which he is to give to the Emperor in July;⁠—and even to the reception afterwards.”

“To hear you talk, Georgiana, one would think that you didn’t understand anything,” said Lady Monogram. “People are going to see the Emperor, not to see the Melmottes. I dare say we might have gone⁠—only I suppose we shan’t now because of this row.”

“I don’t know what you mean by a row, Julia.”

“Well;⁠—it is a row, and I hate rows. Going there when the Emperor of China is there, or anything of that kind, is no more than going to the play. Somebody chooses to get all London into his house, and all London chooses to go. But it isn’t understood that that means