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.
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