truth dawned on me that the world I found so indispensable could
after all dispense with me. It was all very well for Lady Ashleigh to
assure me that I was deeply missed; but a letter from F--, who was
one of the party, written 'in haste, just starting to shoot', and
coming as a tardy reply to one of my cleverest, made me aware that
the house party had suffered little from my absence, and that few
sighs were wasted on me, even in the quarter which I had assumed to
have been discreetly alluded to by the underlined _all_ in Lady
Ashleigh's 'we shall _all_ miss you'. A thrust which smarted more, if
it bit less deeply, came from my cousin Nesta, who wrote: 'It's
horrid for you to have to be baking in London now; but, after all, it
must be a great pleasure to you' (malicious little wretch!) 'to have
such interesting and important work to do.' Here was a nemesis for an
innocent illusion I had been accustomed to foster in the minds of my
relations and acquaintances, especially in the breasts of the
trustful and admiring maidens whom I had taken down to dinner in the
last two seasons; a fiction which I had almost reached the point of
believing in myself. For the plain truth was that my work was neither
interesting nor important, and consisted chiefly at present in
smoking cigarettes, in saying that Mr So-and-So was away and would be
back about 1st October, in being absent for lunch from twelve till
two, and in my spare moments making _précis_ of--let us say--the less
confidential consular reports, and squeezing the results into
cast-iron schedules. The reason of my detention was not a cloud on
the international horizon--though I may say in passing that there was
such a cloud--but a caprice on the part of a remote and mighty
personage, the effect of which, ramifying downwards, had dislocated
the carefully-laid holiday plans of the humble juniors, and in my own
small case had upset the arrangement between myself and K--, who
positively liked the dog-days in Whitehall.