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She caught Lydia’s fingers in a stormy pressure.

“Say you’ll help me—you and your husband.”

Lydia tried to free herself.

“What you ask is impossible; you must see that it is. No one could interfere in—in the way you ask.”

Mrs. Cope’s clutch tightened.

“You won’t, then? You won’t?”

“Certainly not. Let me go, please.”

Mrs. Cope released her with a laugh.

“Oh, go by all means—pray don’t let me detain you! Shall you go and tell Lady Susan Condit that there’s a pair of us—or shall I save you the trouble of enlightening her?”

Lydia stood still in the middle of the path, seeing her antagonist through a mist of terror. Mrs. Cope was still laughing.

“Oh, I’m not spiteful by nature, my dear; but you’re a little more than flesh and blood can stand! It’s impossible, is it? Let you go, indeed! You’re too good to be mixed up in my affairs, are you? Why, you little fool, the first day I laid eyes on you I saw that you and I were both in the same box— that’s the reason I spoke to you.”

She stepped nearer, her smile dilating on Lydia like a lamp through a fog.

“You can take your choice, you know; I always play fair. If you’ll tell I’ll promise not to. Now then, which is it to be?”

Lydia, involuntarily, had begun to move away from the pelting storm of words; but at this she turned and sat down again.

“You may go,” she said simply.”I shall stay here.”

IV

She stayed there for a long time, in the hypnotized contemplation, not of Mrs. Cope’s present, but of her own past. Gannett, early that morning, had gone off on a long walk—he had fallen into the habit of taking these mountain tramps with various fellow lodgers; but even had he been within reach she could not have gone to him just then. She had to deal with herself first. She was surprised to find how, in the last months, she had lost the habit of introspection. Since their coming to the Hotel Bellosguardo she and Gannett had tacitly avoided themselves and each other.

She was aroused by the whistle of the three o’clock steamboat as it neared the landing just beyond the hotel gates. Three o’clock! Then Gannett would soon be back—he had told her to expect him before four. She rose hurriedly, her face averted from the inquisitorial facade of the hotel. She could not see him just yet; she could not go indoors. She slipped through one of the overgrown garden-alleys and climbed a steep path to the hills.

It was dark when she opened their sitting-room door. Gannett was sitting on the window ledge smoking a cigarette. Cigarettes were now his chief resource: he had not written a line during the two months they had spent at the Hotel Bellosguardo. In that respect, it had turned out not to be the right milieu after all.

He started up at Lydia’s entrance.

“Where have you been? I was getting anxious.”

She sat down in a chair near the door.

“Up the mountain,” she said wearily.

“Alone?”

“Yes.”

Gannett threw away his cigarette: the sound of her voice made him want to see her face.

“Shall we have a little light?” he suggested.

She made no answer and he lifted the globe from the lamp and put a match to the wick. Then he looked at her.

“Anything wrong? You look done up.”

She sat glancing vaguely about the little sitting room, dimly lit by the pallid-globed lamp, which left in twilight the outlines of the furniture, of his writing table heaped with books and papers, of the tea roses and jasmine drooping on the mantelpiece. How like home it had all grown—how like home!

“Lydia, what is wrong?” he repeated.

She moved away from him, feeling for her hatpins and turning to lay her hat and sunshade on the table.

Suddenly she said: “That woman has been talking to me.”

Gannett stared.

“That woman? What woman?”

“Mrs. Linton—Mrs. Cope.”

He gave a start of annoyance, still, as she perceived, not grasping the full import of her words.

“The deuce! She told you—?”

“She told me everything.”

Gannett looked at her anxiously.

“What impudence! I’m so sorry that you should have been exposed to this, dear.”

“Exposed!” Lydia laughed.

Gannett’s brow clouded and they looked away from each other.