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“Why not?” she said at length, in a tone of veiled irritation.

“The place is full of old cats in caps who gossip with the chaplain. Shall you like—I mean, it would be different if—”

She flamed up.

“Do you suppose I care? It’s none of their business.”

“Of course not; but you won’t get them to think so.”

“They may think what they please.”

He looked at her doubtfully.

“It’s for you to decide.”

“We’ll stay,” she repeated.

Gannett, before they met, had made himself known as a successful writer of short stories and of a novel which had achieved the distinction of being widely discussed. The reviewers called him “promising,” and Lydia now accused herself of having too long interfered with the fulfillment of his promise. There was a special irony in the fact, since his passionate assurance that only the stimulus of her companionship could bring out his latent faculty had almost given the dignity of a “vocation” to her course: there had been moments when she had felt unable to assume, before posterity, the responsibility of thwarting his career. And, after all, he had not written a line since they had been together: his first desire to write had come from renewed contact with the world! Was it all a mistake then? Must the most intelligent choice work more disastrously than the blundering combinations of chance? Or was there a still more humiliating answer to her perplexities? His sudden impulse of activity so exactly coincided with her own wish to withdraw, for a time, from the range of his observation, that she wondered if he too were not seeking sanctuary from intolerable problems.

“You must begin tomorrow!” she cried, hiding a tremor under the laugh with which she added, “I wonder if there’s any ink in the inkstand?”

Whatever else they had at the Hotel Bellosguardo, they had, as Miss Pinsent said, “a certain tone.” It was to Lady Susan Condit that they owed this inestimable benefit; an advantage ranking in Miss Pinsent’s opinion above even the lawn tennis courts and the resident chaplain. It was the fact of Lady Susan’s annual visit that made the hotel what it was. Miss Pinsent was certainly the last to underrate such a privilege:—”It’s so important, my dear, forming as we do a little family, that there should be someone to give the tone; and no one could do it better than Lady Susan—an earl’s daughter and a person of such determination. Dear Mrs. Ainger now—who really ought, you know, when Lady Susan’s away—absolutely refuses to assert herself.” Miss Pinsent sniffed derisively.”A bishop’s niece!—my dear, I saw her once actually give in to some South Americans—and before us all. She gave up her seat at table to oblige them—such a lack of dignity! Lady Susan spoke to her very plainly about it afterwards.”

Miss Pinsent glanced across the lake and adjusted her auburn front.

“But of course I don’t deny that the stand Lady Susan takes is not always easy to live up to—for the rest of us, I mean. Monsieur Grossart, our good proprietor, finds it trying at times, I know—he has said as much, privately, to Mrs. Ainger and me. After all, the poor man is not to blame for wanting to fill his hotel, is he? And Lady Susan is so difficult—so very difficult—about new people. One might almost say that she disapproves of them beforehand, on principle. And yet she’s had warnings—she very nearly made a dreadful mistake once with the Duchess of Levens, who dyed her hair and—well, swore and smoked. One would have thought that might have been a lesson to Lady Susan.” Miss Pinsent resumed her knitting with a sigh.”There are exceptions, of course. She took at once to you and Mr. Gannett—it was quite remarkable, really. Oh, I don’t mean that either—of course not! It was perfectly natural—we all thought you so charming and interesting from the first day—we knew at once that Mr. Gannett was intellectual, by the magazines you took in; but you know what I mean. Lady Susan is so very—well, I won’t say prejudiced, as Mrs. Ainger does—but so prepared not to like new people, that her taking to you in that way was a surprise to us all, I confess.”