Page:The New Arcadia (Tucker).djvu/52

42 more than held her own in the world of taste and fashion.

Her sister, fair and retiring, with the gentlest of trusting blue eyes, rather large mouth, straight soft hair, regular but not striking features, impressed only those who knew her. She thought herself plain and stupid—neither of which she was. Her sister did not contribute to undeceive her: neither did her mother. Thanks to the latter's tact and devotion to desirable personages, the Courtenays were asked and appeared everywhere—at tennis parties, afternoon teas, dances, and At Homes. Mornings were spent in recovering from the effects of the previous evening's engagements—with a little soupçon of watering and arranging of flowers, to give a sense of having been "quite busy this morning."

Afternoons were devoted to ceremonial visitings when no engagements to salons, matinées and other fashionable fixtures intervened. The evening seemed blank and tiresome if no festivity or out-going marked it. A miserable failure the entire round of feverish existence actually was. No time or opportunity was afforded for forming real friendships, for rational converse, for the joys of intellectual or domestic life.

There are some things that cannot go on. Dr. Courtenay found himself sinking deeper and deeper into debt. "Calls" were made by financial institutions that hitherto had paid him handsome dividends. The liabilities his generous nature had led him to incur in the interest of distressed friends or poor patients were accumulating. Something must be done. The carriage and coachman were "put down." The house, not a pretentious one, must be kept up, or the practice would suffer.

"If we do not go out people will cease to ask us,"