The House of Mirth

ook II, Chapter 2

Miss Bart, emerging late the next morning from her cabin, found
herself alone on the deck of the Sabrina.

The cushioned chairs, disposed expectantly under the wide awning,
showed no signs of recent occupancy, and she presently learned
from a steward that Mrs. Dorset had not yet appeared, and that
the gentlemen—separately—had gone ashore as soon as they had
breakfasted. Supplied with these facts, Lily leaned awhile over the
side, giving herself up to a leisurely enjoyment of the spectacle
before her. Unclouded sunlight enveloped sea and shore in a bath
of purest radiancy. The purpling waters drew a sharp white line of
foam at the base of the shore; against its irregular eminences,
hotels and villas flashed from the greyish verdure of olive and
eucalyptus; and the background of bare and finely-pencilled
mountains quivered in a pale intensity of light.

How beautiful it was—and how she loved beauty! She had always
felt that her sensibility in this direction made up for certain
obtusenesses of feeling of which she was less proud; and during the
last three months she had indulged it passionately. The Dorsets’
invitation to go abroad with them had come as an almost miraculous
release from crushing difficulties; and her faculty for renewing
herself in new scenes, and casting off problems of conduct as
easily as the surroundings in which they had arisen, made the mere
change from one place to another seem, not merely a postponement,
but a solution of her troubles. Moral complications existed for her
only in the environment that had produced them; she did not mean
to slight or ignore them, but they lost their reality when they
changed their background. She could not have remained in New York
without repaying the money she owed to Trenor; to acquit herself
of that odious debt she might even have faced a marriage with
Rosedale; but the accident of placing the Atlantic between herself
and her obligations made them dwindle out of sight as if they had
been milestones and she had travelled past them.

Her two months on the Sabrina had been especially calculated to
aid this illusion of distance. She had been plunged into new
scenes, and had found in them a renewal of old hopes and ambitions.
The cruise itself charmed her as a romantic adventure. She was
vaguely touched by the names and scenes amid which she moved, and
had listened to Ned Silverton reading Theocritus by moonlight,
as the yacht rounded the Sicilian promontories, with a thrill
of the nerves that confirmed her belief in her intellectual
superiority. But the weeks at Cannes and Nice had really given
her more pleasure. The gratification of being welcomed in high
company, and of making her own ascendency felt there, so that she
found herself figuring once more as the “beautiful Miss Bart” in
the interesting journal devoted to recording the least movements
of her cosmopolitan companions—all these experiences tended to
throw into the extreme background of memory the prosaic and sordid
difficulties from which she had escaped.

If she was faintly aware of fresh difficulties ahead, she was
sure of her ability to meet them: it was characteristic of her to
feel that the only problems she could not solve were those with
which she was familiar. Meanwhile she could honestly be proud of
the skill with which she had adapted herself to somewhat delicate
conditions. She had reason to think that she had made herself
equally necessary to her host and hostess; and if only she had seen
any perfectly irreproachable means of drawing a financial profit
from the situation, there would have been no cloud on her horizon.
The truth was that her funds, as usual, were inconveniently low;
and to neither Dorset nor his wife could this vulgar embarrassment
be safely hinted. Still, the need was not a pressing one; she could
worry along, as she had so often done before, with the hope of some
happy change of fortune to sustain her; and meanwhile life was
gay and beautiful and easy, and she was conscious of figuring not
unworthily in such a setting.

She was engaged to breakfast that morning with the Duchess of
Beltshire, and at twelve o’clock she asked to be set ashore in the
gig. Before this she had sent her maid to enquire if she might see
Mrs. Dorset; but the reply came back that the latter was tired,
and trying to sleep. Lily thought she understood the reason of
the rebuff. Her hostess had not been included in the Duchess’s
invitation, though she herself had made the most loyal efforts in
that direction. But her grace was impervious to hints, and invited
or omitted as she chose. It was not Lily’s fault if Mrs. Dorset’s
complicated attitudes did not fall in with the Duchess’s easy gait.
The Duchess, who seldom explained herself, had not formulated her
objection beyond saying: “She’s rather a bore, you know. The only
one of your friends I like is that little Mr. Bry—HE’S funny—” but
Lily knew enough not to press the point, and was not altogether
sorry to be thus distinguished at her friend’s expense. Bertha
certainly HAD grown tiresome since she had taken to poetry and Ned
Silverton.

On the whole, it was a relief to break away now and then from
the Sabrina; and the Duchess’s little breakfast, organized by
Lord Hubert with all his usual virtuosity, was the pleasanter
to Lily for not including her travelling-companions. Dorset, of
late, had grown more than usually morose and incalculable, and
Ned Silverton went about with an air that seemed to challenge the
universe. The freedom and lightness of the ducal intercourse made
an agreeable change from these complications, and Lily was tempted,
after luncheon, to adjourn in the wake of her companions to the
hectic atmosphere of the Casino. She did not mean to play; her
diminished pocket-money offered small scope for the adventure; but
it amused her to sit on a divan, under the doubtful protection of
the Duchess’s back, while the latter hung above her stakes at a
neighbouring table.

The rooms were packed with the gazing throng which, in the
afternoon hours, trickles heavily between the tables, like the
Sunday crowd in a lion-house. In the stagnant flow of the mass,
identities were hardly distinguishable; but Lily presently saw
Mrs. Bry cleaving her determined way through the doors, and, in
the broad wake she left, the light figure of Mrs. Fisher bobbing
after her like a row-boat at the stern of a tug. Mrs. Bry pressed
on, evidently animated by the resolve to reach a certain point in
the rooms; but Mrs. Fisher, as she passed Lily, broke from her
towing-line, and let herself float to the girl’s side.

“Lose her?” she echoed the latter’s query, with an indifferent
glance at Mrs. Bry’s retreating back. “I daresay—it doesn’t matter:
I HAVE lost her already.” And, as Lily exclaimed, she added: “We
had an awful row this morning. You know, of course, that the
Duchess chucked her at dinner last night, and she thinks it was my
fault—my want of management. The worst of it is, the message—just a
mere word by telephone—came so late that the dinner HAD to be paid
for; and Becassin HAD run it up—it had been so drummed into him
that the Duchess was coming!” Mrs. Fisher indulged in a faint laugh
at the remembrance. “Paying for what she doesn’t get rankles so
dreadfully with Louisa: I can’t make her see that it’s one of the
preliminary steps to getting what you haven’t paid for—and as I was
the nearest thing to smash, she smashed me to atoms, poor dear!”

Lily murmured her commiseration. Impulses of sympathy came
naturally to her, and it was instinctive to proffer her help to
Mrs. Fisher.

“If there’s anything I can do—if it’s only a question of meeting
the Duchess! I heard her say she thought Mr. Bry amusing——”

But Mrs. Fisher interposed with a decisive gesture. “My dear,
I have my pride: the pride of my trade. I couldn’t manage the
Duchess, and I can’t palm off your arts on Louisa Bry as mine. I’ve
taken the final step: I go to Paris tonight with the Sam Gormers.
THEY’RE still in the elementary stage; an Italian Prince is a great
deal more than a Prince to them, and they’re always on the brink
of taking a courier for one. To save them from that is my present
mission.” She laughed again at the picture. “But before I go I want
to make my last will and testament—I want to leave you the Brys.”

“Me?” Miss Bart joined in her amusement. “It’s charming of you to
remember me, dear; but really——”

“You’re already so well provided for?” Mrs. Fisher flashed a sharp
glance at her. “ARE you, though, Lily—to the point of rejecting my
offer?”

Miss Bart coloured slowly. “What I really meant was, that the Brys
wouldn’t in the least care to be so disposed of.”

Mrs. Fisher continued to probe her embarrassment with an
unflinching eye. “What you really meant was that you’ve snubbed the
Brys horribly; and you know that they know——”

“Carry!”

“Oh, on certain sides Louisa bristles with perceptions. If you’d
even managed to have them asked once on the Sabrina—especially when
royalties were coming! But it’s not too late,” she ended earnestly,
“it’s not too late for either of you.”

Lily smiled. “Stay over, and I’ll get the Duchess to dine with
them.”

“I shan’t stay over—the Gormers have paid for my SALON-LIT,” said
Mrs. Fisher with simplicity. “But get the Duchess to dine with them
all the same.”

Lily’s smile again flowed into a slight laugh: her friend’s
importunity was beginning to strike her as irrelevant. “I’m sorry I
have been negligent about the Brys——” she began.

“Oh, as to the Brys—it’s you I’m thinking of,” said Mrs. Fisher
abruptly. She paused, and then, bending forward, with a lowered
voice: “You know we all went on to Nice last night when the Duchess
chucked us. It was Louisa’s idea—I told her what I thought of it.”

Miss Bart assented. “Yes—I caught sight of you on the way back, at
the station.”

“Well, the man who was in the carriage with you and George
Dorset—that horrid little Dabham who does ‘Society Notes from
the Riviera’—had been dining with us at Nice. And he’s telling
everybody that you and Dorset came back alone after midnight.”

“Alone—? When he was with us?” Lily laughed, but her laugh faded
into gravity under the prolonged implication of Mrs. Fisher’s look.
“We DID come back alone—if that’s so very dreadful! But whose fault
was it? The Duchess was spending the night at Cimiez with the Crown
Princess; Bertha got bored with the show, and went off early,
promising to meet us at the station. We turned up on time, but she
didn’t—she didn’t turn up at all!”

Miss Bart made this announcement in the tone of one who presents,
with careless assurance, a complete vindication; but Mrs. Fisher
received it in a manner almost inconsequent. She seemed to have
lost sight of her friend’s part in the incident: her inward vision
had taken another slant.

“Bertha never turned up at all? Then how on earth did she get back?”

“Oh, by the next train, I suppose; there were two extra ones for
the FETE. At any rate, I know she’s safe on the yacht, though I
haven’t yet seen her; but you see it was not my fault,” Lily summed
up.

“Not your fault that Bertha didn’t turn up? My poor child, if only
you don’t have to pay for it!” Mrs. Fisher rose—she had seen Mrs.
Bry surging back in her direction. “There’s Louisa, and I must
be off—oh, we’re on the best of terms externally; we’re lunching
together; but at heart it’s ME she’s lunching on,” she explained;
and with a last hand-clasp and a last look, she added: “Remember, I
leave her to you; she’s hovering now, ready to take you in.”

* * * * *

Lily carried the impression of Mrs. Fisher’s leave-taking away with
her from the Casino doors. She had accomplished, before leaving,
the first step toward her reinstatement in Mrs. Bry’s good graces.
An affable advance—a vague murmur that they must see more of each
other—an allusive glance to a near future that was felt to include
the Duchess as well as the Sabrina—how easily it was all done, if
one possessed the knack of doing it! She wondered at herself, as
she had so often wondered, that, possessing the knack, she did not
more consistently exercise it. But sometimes she was forgetful—and
sometimes, could it be that she was proud? Today, at any rate, she
had been vaguely conscious of a reason for sinking her pride, had
in fact even sunk it to the point of suggesting to Lord Hubert
Dacey, whom she ran across on the Casino steps, that he might
really get the Duchess to dine with the Brys, if SHE undertook to
have them asked on the Sabrina. Lord Hubert had promised his help,
with the readiness on which she could always count: it was his only
way of ever reminding her that he had once been ready to do so much
more for her. Her path, in short, seemed to smooth itself before
her as she advanced; yet the faint stir of uneasiness persisted.
Had it been produced, she wondered, by her chance meeting with
Selden? She thought not—time and change seemed so completely to
have relegated him to his proper distance. The sudden and exquisite
reaction from her anxieties had had the effect of throwing the
recent past so far back that even Selden, as part of it, retained
a certain air of unreality. And he had made it so clear that they
were not to meet again; that he had merely dropped down to Nice
for a day or two, and had almost his foot on the next steamer.
No—that part of the past had merely surged up for a moment on the
fleeing surface of events; and now that it was submerged again, the
uncertainty, the apprehension persisted.

They grew to sudden acuteness as she caught sight of George Dorset
descending the steps of the Hotel de Paris and making for her
across the square. She had meant to drive down to the quay and
regain the yacht; but she now had the immediate impression that
something more was to happen first.

“Which way are you going? Shall we walk a bit?” he began, putting
the second question before the first was answered, and not waiting
for a reply to either before he directed her silently toward the
comparative seclusion of the lower gardens.

She detected in him at once all the signs of extreme nervous
tension. The skin was puffed out under his sunken eyes, and its
sallowness had paled to a leaden white against which his irregular
eyebrows and long reddish moustache were relieved with a saturnine
effect. His appearance, in short, presented an odd mixture of the
bedraggled and the ferocious.

He walked beside her in silence, with quick precipitate steps, till
they reached the embowered slopes to the east of the Casino; then,
pulling up abruptly, he said: “Have you seen Bertha?”

“No—when I left the yacht she was not yet up.”

He received this with a laugh like the whirring sound in a disabled
clock. “Not yet up? Had she gone to bed? Do you know at what time
she came on board? This morning at seven!” he exclaimed.

“At seven?” Lily started. “What happened—an accident to the train?”

He laughed again. “They missed the train—all the trains—they had to
drive back.”

“Well——?” She hesitated, feeling at once how little even this
necessity accounted for the fatal lapse of hours.

“Well, they couldn’t get a carriage at once—at that time of night,
you know—” the explanatory note made it almost seem as though he
were putting the case for his wife—“and when they finally did, it
was only a one-horse cab, and the horse was lame!”

“How tiresome! I see,” she affirmed, with the more earnestness
because she was so nervously conscious that she did not; and after
a pause she added: “I’m so sorry—but ought we to have waited?”

“Waited for the one-horse cab? It would scarcely have carried the
four of us, do you think?”

She took this in what seemed the only possible way, with a laugh
intended to sink the question itself in his humorous treatment of
it. “Well, it would have been difficult; we should have had to walk
by turns. But it would have been jolly to see the sunrise.”

“Yes: the sunrise WAS jolly,” he agreed.

“Was it? You saw it, then?”

“I saw it, yes; from the deck. I waited up for them.”

“Naturally—I suppose you were worried. Why didn’t you call on me to
share your vigil?”

He stood still, dragging at his moustache with a lean weak hand. “I
don’t think you would have cared for its DENOUEMENT,” he said with
sudden grimness.

Again she was disconcerted by the abrupt change in his tone, and
as in one flash she saw the peril of the moment, and the need of
keeping her sense of it out of her eyes.

“DENOUEMENT—isn’t that too big a word for such a small incident?
The worst of it, after all, is the fatigue which Bertha has
probably slept off by this time.”

She clung to the note bravely, though its futility was now plain to
her in the glare of his miserable eyes.

“Don’t—don’t——!” he broke out, with the hurt cry of a child; and
while she tried to merge her sympathy, and her resolve to ignore
any cause for it, in one ambiguous murmur of deprecation, he
dropped down on the bench near which they had paused, and poured
out the wretchedness of his soul.

It was a dreadful hour—an hour from which she emerged shrinking
and seared, as though her lids had been scorched by its actual
glare. It was not that she had never had premonitory glimpses of
such an outbreak; but rather because, here and there throughout
the three months, the surface of life had shown such ominous
cracks and vapours that her fears had always been on the alert
for an upheaval. There had been moments when the situation had
presented itself under a homelier yet more vivid image—that of a
shaky vehicle, dashed by unbroken steeds over a bumping road, while
she cowered within, aware that the harness wanted mending, and
wondering what would give way first. Well—everything had given way
now; and the wonder was that the crazy outfit had held together so
long. Her sense of being involved in the crash, instead of merely
witnessing it from the road, was intensified by the way in which
Dorset, through his furies of denunciation and wild reactions of
self-contempt, made her feel the need he had of her, the place she
had taken in his life. But for her, what ear would have been open
to his cries? And what hand but hers could drag him up again to a
footing of sanity and self-respect? All through the stress of the
struggle with him, she had been conscious of something faintly
maternal in her efforts to guide and uplift him. But for the
present, if he clung to her, it was not in order to be dragged up,
but to feel some one floundering in the depths with him: he wanted
her to suffer with him, not to help him to suffer less.

Happily for both, there was little physical strength to sustain his
frenzy. It left him, collapsed and breathing heavily, to an apathy
so deep and prolonged that Lily almost feared the passers-by would
think it the result of a seizure, and stop to offer their aid. But
Monte Carlo is, of all places, the one where the human bond is
least close, and odd sights are the least arresting. If a glance
or two lingered on the couple, no intrusive sympathy disturbed
them; and it was Lily herself who broke the silence by rising from
her seat. With the clearing of her vision the sweep of peril had
extended, and she saw that the post of danger was no longer at
Dorset’s side.

“If you won’t go back, I must—don’t make me leave you!” she urged.

But he remained mutely resistant, and she added: “What are you
going to do? You really can’t sit here all night.”

“I can go to an hotel. I can telegraph my lawyers.” He sat up,
roused by a new thought. “By Jove, Selden’s at Nice—I’ll send for
Selden!”

Lily, at this, reseated herself with a cry of alarm. “No, no, NO!”
she protested.

He swung round on her distrustfully. “Why not Selden? He’s a lawyer
isn’t he? One will do as well as another in a case like this.”

“As badly as another, you mean. I thought you relied on ME to help
you.”

“You do—by being so sweet and patient with me. If it hadn’t been
for you I’d have ended the thing long ago. But now it’s got to
end.” He rose suddenly, straightening himself with an effort. “You
can’t want to see me ridiculous.”

She looked at him kindly. “That’s just it.” Then, after a moment’s
pondering, almost to her own surprise she broke out with a flash of
inspiration: “Well, go over and see Mr. Selden. You’ll have time to
do it before dinner.”

“Oh, DINNER——” he mocked her; but she left him with the smiling
rejoinder: “Dinner on board, remember; we’ll put it off till nine
if you like.”

It was past four already; and when a cab had dropped her at the
quay, and she stood waiting for the gig to put off for her,
she began to wonder what had been happening on the yacht. Of
Silverton’s whereabouts there had been no mention. Had he returned
to the Sabrina? Or could Bertha—the dread alternative sprang on
her suddenly—could Bertha, left to herself, have gone ashore to
rejoin him? Lily’s heart stood still at the thought. All her
concern had hitherto been for young Silverton, not only because,
in such affairs, the woman’s instinct is to side with the man, but
because his case made a peculiar appeal to her sympathies. He was
so desperately in earnest, poor youth, and his earnestness was of
so different a quality from Bertha’s, though hers too was desperate
enough. The difference was that Bertha was in earnest only about
herself, while he was in earnest about her. But now, at the actual
crisis, this difference seemed to throw the weight of destitution
on Bertha’s side, since at least he had her to suffer for, and
she had only herself. At any rate, viewed less ideally, all the
disadvantages of such a situation were for the woman; and it was
to Bertha that Lily’s sympathies now went out. She was not fond of
Bertha Dorset, but neither was she without a sense of obligation,
the heavier for having so little personal liking to sustain it.
Bertha had been kind to her, they had lived together, during the
last months, on terms of easy friendship, and the sense of friction
of which Lily had recently become aware seemed to make it the more
urgent that she should work undividedly in her friend’s interest.

It was in Bertha’s interest, certainly, that she had despatched
Dorset to consult with Lawrence Selden. Once the grotesqueness
of the situation accepted, she had seen at a glance that it was
the safest in which Dorset could find himself. Who but Selden
could thus miraculously combine the skill to save Bertha with the
obligation of doing so? The consciousness that much skill would
be required made Lily rest thankfully in the greatness of the
obligation. Since he would HAVE to pull Bertha through she could
trust him to find a way; and she put the fulness of her trust in
the telegram she managed to send him on her way to the quay.

Thus far, then, Lily felt that she had done well; and the
conviction strengthened her for the task that remained. She and
Bertha had never been on confidential terms, but at such a crisis
the barriers of reserve must surely fall: Dorset’s wild allusions
to the scene of the morning made Lily feel that they were down
already, and that any attempt to rebuild them would be beyond
Bertha’s strength. She pictured the poor creature shivering behind
her fallen defences and awaiting with suspense the moment when
she could take refuge in the first shelter that offered. If only
that shelter had not already offered itself elsewhere! As the gig
traversed the short distance between the quay and the yacht, Lily
grew more than ever alarmed at the possible consequences of her
long absence. What if the wretched Bertha, finding in all the long
hours no soul to turn to—but by this time Lily’s eager foot was on
the side-ladder, and her first step on the Sabrina showed the worst
of her apprehensions to be unfounded; for there, in the luxurious
shade of the after-deck, the wretched Bertha, in full command of
her usual attenuated elegance, sat dispensing tea to the Duchess of
Beltshire and Lord Hubert.

The sight filled Lily with such surprise that she felt that
Bertha, at least, must read its meaning in her look, and she was
proportionately disconcerted by the blankness of the look returned.
But in an instant she saw that Mrs. Dorset had, of necessity, to
look blank before the others, and that, to mitigate the effect
of her own surprise, she must at once produce some simple reason
for it. The long habit of rapid transitions made it easy for her
to exclaim to the Duchess: “Why, I thought you’d gone back to the
Princess!” and this sufficed for the lady she addressed, if it was
hardly enough for Lord Hubert.

At least it opened the way to a lively explanation of how the
Duchess was, in fact, going back the next moment, but had first
rushed out to the yacht for a word with Mrs. Dorset on the subject
of tomorrow’s dinner—the dinner with the Brys, to which Lord Hubert
had finally insisted on dragging them.

“To save my neck, you know!” he explained, with a glance that
appealed to Lily for some recognition of his promptness; and the
Duchess added, with her noble candour: “Mr. Bry has promised him a
tip, and he says if we go he’ll pass it onto us.”

This led to some final pleasantries, in which, as it seemed to
Lily, Mrs. Dorset bore her part with astounding bravery, and at the
close of which Lord Hubert, from half way down the side-ladder,
called back, with an air of numbering heads: “And of course we may
count on Dorset too?”

“Oh, count on him,” his wife assented gaily. She was keeping up
well to the last—but as she turned back from waving her adieux over
the side, Lily said to herself that the mask must drop and the soul
of fear look out.

Mrs. Dorset turned back slowly; perhaps she wanted time to steady
her muscles; at any rate, they were still under perfect control
when, dropping once more into her seat behind the tea-table, she
remarked to Miss Bart with a faint touch of irony: “I suppose I
ought to say good morning.”

If it was a cue, Lily was ready to take it, though with only
the vaguest sense of what was expected of her in return. There
was something unnerving in the contemplation of Mrs. Dorset’s
composure, and she had to force the light tone in which she
answered: “I tried to see you this morning, but you were not yet
up.”

“No—I got to bed late. After we missed you at the station I thought
we ought to wait for you till the last train.” She spoke very
gently, but with just the least tinge of reproach.

“You missed us? You waited for us at the station?” Now indeed Lily
was too far adrift in bewilderment to measure the other’s words or
keep watch on her own. “But I thought you didn’t get to the station
till after the last train had left!”

Mrs. Dorset, examining her between lowered lids, met this with the
immediate query: “Who told you that?”

“George—I saw him just now in the gardens.”

“Ah, is that George’s version? Poor George—he was in no state to
remember what I told him. He had one of his worst attacks this
morning, and I packed him off to see the doctor. Do you know if he
found him?”

Lily, still lost in conjecture, made no reply, and Mrs. Dorset
settled herself indolently in her seat. “He’ll wait to see him; he
was horribly frightened about himself. It’s very bad for him to be
worried, and whenever anything upsetting happens, it always brings
on an attack.”

This time Lily felt sure that a cue was being pressed on her;
but it was put forth with such startling suddenness, and with so
incredible an air of ignoring what it led up to, that she could
only falter out doubtfully: “Anything upsetting?”

“Yes—such as having you so conspicuously on his hands in the small
hours. You know, my dear, you’re rather a big responsibility in
such a scandalous place after midnight.”

At that—at the complete unexpectedness and the inconceivable
audacity of it—Lily could not restrain the tribute of an astonished
laugh.

“Well, really—considering it was you who burdened him with the
responsibility!”

Mrs. Dorset took this with an exquisite mildness. “By not having
the superhuman cleverness to discover you in that frightful rush
for the train? Or the imagination to believe that you’d take it
without us—you and he all alone—instead of waiting quietly in the
station till we DID manage to meet you?”

Lily’s colour rose: it was growing clear to her that Bertha was
pursuing an object, following a line she had marked out for
herself. Only, with such a doom impending, why waste time in these
childish efforts to avert it? The puerility of the attempt disarmed
Lily’s indignation: did it not prove how horribly the poor creature
was frightened?

“No; by our simply all keeping together at Nice,” she returned.

“Keeping together? When it was you who seized the first opportunity
to rush off with the Duchess and her friends? My dear Lily, you are
not a child to be led by the hand!”

“No—nor to be lectured, Bertha, really; if that’s what you are
doing to me now.”

Mrs. Dorset smiled on her reproachfully. “Lecture you—I? Heaven
forbid! I was merely trying to give you a friendly hint. But it’s
usually the other way round, isn’t it? I’m expected to take hints,
not to give them: I’ve positively lived on them all these last
months.”

“Hints—from me to you?” Lily repeated.

“Oh, negative ones merely—what not to be and to do and to see. And
I think I’ve taken them to admiration. Only, my dear, if you’ll let
me say so, I didn’t understand that one of my negative duties was
NOT to warn you when you carried your imprudence too far.”

A chill of fear passed over Miss Bart: a sense of remembered
treachery that was like the gleam of a knife in the dusk. But
compassion, in a moment, got the better of her instinctive
recoil. What was this outpouring of senseless bitterness but the
tracked creature’s attempt to cloud the medium through which it
was fleeing? It was on Lily’s lips to exclaim: “You poor soul,
don’t double and turn—come straight back to me, and we’ll find a
way out!” But the words died under the impenetrable insolence of
Bertha’s smile. Lily sat silent, taking the brunt of it quietly,
letting it spend itself on her to the last drop of its accumulated
falseness; then, without a word, she rose and went down to her
cabin.