Lady Méchante

By Gelett Burgess

"Lady Méchante" by Gelett Burgess. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Good Press
• Release date: Dec 8, 2020
• ISBN: 4064066427443

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Gelett Burgess

Lady Méchante

Published by Good Press, 2020

[e-mail]

EAN 4064066427443

Table of Contents

LADY MÉCHANTE

II

III

IV

V

VI

AT the age of three-and-twenty, Mrs. Florizelle Gaillarde found, among her charms and tokens, item: a flamboyant youth which had at last got its second wind, in the rather splendid pace she had set for herself, and, to this, a nimble wit sharpened to a wire edge by alternate poverty and wealth; also a footing in the haut monde won by finesse, the attainment of which scarce repaid her for the struggle. She had, moreover, a sense of the Relative Importance of Things by which she was able to classify her desires and to lay a tiny curly finger upon her nearest wish. First, then, she touched Romance, for, despite her variations of social altitude, neither Time nor Fortune had yet brought to her door an Interesting Man.

While her husband had lived, life had gone, in a way, merrily enough, for his profession (he was a swell "cracksman

of acknowledged ability) had savored their nights with the truths that are stranger than fiction; but, even then, she was by no means satisfied. No matter how picturesque a man's trade may be, if he is not of the fibre of fancy, he grows dulled, sooner or later, to the beautiful opportunities of his vocation, and inevitably he gets to taking his emotions cavalierly. Leopold had done his poor best, in the earlier years of their married life, to satisfy his wife's idealism, but he was internally cursed with the fatal quality of meaning well." Though, after the honeymoon, he had given himself up to her empire, she had never really succeeded in scanning any poetical quality into the bald prose of his profession. Such things must come intuitively, and Leopold was a hopeless Uitlander to the fate-marked aristocracy of Pure Romance.

He was a clever burglar, as burglars go, but he had more of the artisan than the artist in him. His fingers were facile, but his fancy faint. He dabbled in wee sensations; he was quick enough at a hint, but slow to see for himself, at a clin d'œil, what risks were raw, what ripe, what rotten.

After his death, Florizelle, who, in her salad days, before the mésalliance, had been a regularly apprenticed débutante in the service of Madame Qui-Vive, was enabled, thanks to her departed husband's industry, to take up again her card case and lorgnette, brougham and liveries, and enter London society through the Gate of Affluence as a sort of journeyman mondaine, to practice the mechanics of high life amenities.

The assumption of the old-new routine, however, entailed many onerous punctilios that chafed her more mature enthusiasm. The receptions to which she was invited were dull, the dinners homicidal. She found that her associates played at the game of Society, now, with the stolidity of whist fiends competing for points and prizes, rather than with any true sporting instinct. In short, she had returned to her world to find one dimension gone. Her sphere had become a mere circle, with longitude and latitude, but without depths of possibility.

She might have escaped, it is true, by staying away from such mummeries had she not unwittingly fascinated a dozen or so frock-coats, who, before she was aware of the invasion, came a-vaulting the walls of her Mayfair street privacy and trampled the garden of her domestic life. They would not come on her days, but persisted in dropping