There was nothing to do save reading and needlework and gossip. It was while pursuing the last avocation that Felicia gathered her chief materials for speculation. These women, what were they? Their names were Mrs. Stapleton, Miss Bunter, Frau Schultz, Frâulein Klinkhardt, and Madame Popea. American, English, German, Roumanian respectively. Yet in spite of wide divergencies in creed, nationality, and character, they all seemed strangely to belong to one class. They were apparently isolated, selfcentred, without ties or aims or hopes. Each had travelled through Europe from pension to pension--a weary pilgrimage. Their lives were for the most part spent in listless idleness, only saved now and then from inanition by the nerving influences of petty bickerings, violent intimacies, sordid jealousies. All had moods of kindness alternating with moods of cynical disregard of susceptibilities. Now and then a wave of hysteria would pass through the atmosphere of depression, when feminine velvet would be rudely thrust back and spiteful claws exposed to view. Even Mrs. Stapleton would occasionally break through her habitual restraint and be goaded into mordant expression. It was the isolation of these women, their vague references to the sheltering home of years ago, their cynical exposition and criticism of undreamed of facts, that made Felicia look upon her surroundings with a child's alarm at the unfamiliar.
Sometimes she felt home-sick and miserable, wished that her uncle and aunt, with whom her home had been for many years since the death of her parents, had taken her out with them to Bermuda. But they, worthy souls, when Colonel Graves was ordered abroad with the regiment, had thought that a year's continental life would be a treat for the girl, and had sent her, in consequence, to the care of Mme. Boccard, a distant kinswoman, whose prospectus read like a synopsis of Eden. They had so set their hearts upon her enjoyment, that, now they were thousands of miles away, she felt it would be ungracious to complain. But she was very unhappy.
“Mon Dieu! This is getting terrible!” said Mme. Popea, one evening.
Dinner was over, and some of the ladies were passing the usual dreary evening in the salon.