It is almost sunset, and Constance Wardour is standing alone at her dressing-room window, which faces the west. It is still in confusion, but she cares little for that. Her thoughts are far away from the “Wardour diamonds” at this moment. Several things have occurred to vex and annoy her today, and Constance Wardour, heiress and autocrat, is not accustomed to being annoyed.
In fact, so peculiar is her nature, that very few things have power to annoy her; but, just now, she is annoyed because she is annoyed.
is“As the queen pleases,” Frank Lamotte had said; and all her fair twenty-one years of life events had been ordered “as the queen pleased.” She had been taught self-reliance, so she told him; she had inherited self-reliance, she might have said, inherited it along with the rich, stron
