And yet the delights
of town were not unknown to her. Her father's first cousin, who had
loved him but married a rich man, often invited the girl to stay with
her in her house in Grosvenor Square. These visits gave her an insight
into life in Mayfair with its attendant pleasures of dances in smart
houses, dinners and suppers in expensive restaurants, the Opera and
theatres, and afternoons at Ranelagh and Hurlingham. She enjoyed them
all; she had enough money to dress well; and she was very popular.
But London could not hold her. Her relative, who was childless, was
anxious that Noreen should remain always with her, at least until she
married--and the older woman determined that the girl should make an
advantageous marriage. But the latter knew that her income was very
welcome to her aunt and, with a spirit of self-sacrifice not usual in
the young, gave up a gay, fashionable life for the dull existence of
a paying drudge in the house of an ungrateful, embittered elderly
spinster. Yet her heart rejoiced when she conscientiously felt that her
brother needed her more and had a greater claim upon her; and gladly she
went to keep house for him in India.
And she was happier than he in their new life. For in this land that is
essentially a soldier's country, won by the sword, held by the sword, in
spite of all that ignorant demagogues in England may say, Fred Daleham felt
all the more keenly the disappointment of his inability to follow the
career that he would have chosen.
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