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Travel! They exhorted her. See Europe and all its wonder while you are still young. And she had, staying in London, Paris, Madrid, Berlin, St. Petersburg. She’d seen all there was to see, and then some, until her trunks were tired and their sides were filled with labels from hotels with exotic names- Hotel de Ville, Hoffenhammerplatz Haus, Le Russe Imperial. Then she had bought new trunks, new clothes and traveled more. There were bits of her past all over Europe’s salons and receiving rooms: a forgotten fan at a café in Madrid, a dress left for the maid who had attended to her in Berlin. She had forgotten and purposely misplaced her possessions until nothing remained that reminded her of Jefferson.
Then she had returned home.
The great house on Fifth Avenue seemed either too big or too small – it seemed to depend on the time of day she observed the large front hall and the darkly paneled sitting rooms. Too old, though, her new architectural sensibilities told her, too old and too fusty by half. Remake, remodel, renew, or better still, knock it down! No, no, too soon for that. Her father had designed this house, and she was not about to give him up and change it all at once, losing the only bit of him she had left.
A year later, and they were still cooing over her. Poor Beth, all of New York was saying, Poor Miss Danderidge. Lost her father and then had her engagement broken and then ran off to Europe to recooperate. Poor thing.
That’s the one thing that never changes, Beth, her mother had reminded her when she returned home. the false modesty, the false sympathy, and the false friends of Society. Society is still here, Beth, as much as you wanted it to crawl into a corner and die while you were away. You’ll have to face it sooner or later, Beth. They’ll be expecting you to.
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