Not daring to allow myself a moment's thought, I fell to immediately packing—fitting in a neat mosaic of stockings and petticoats as though it were the one object of existence.
I do not know if it were minutes or hours before the Marchesa came in, pale and unusually agitated, with no air of enjoying her victory.
"Signorina," she said, "the train for Genoa leaves at 8; I have ordered the carriage for 7.15. You would prefer, perhaps, to dine in your room?"
"I do not wish for dinner, thank you."
"You must allow me to thank you once again, Miss Meredith."
"Do not thank me," I cried, with sudden passion; "I have done nothing to be thanked for."
For, indeed, I was enjoying none of the compensations of martyrdom; for me it was the pang without the palm, as the poet says.
I had fallen in a cause in which I did not believe, had been pressed into a service for which I had no enthusiasm.
"If you will excuse me, Marchesa," I went on, "there are some books of mine in the schoolroom which I must fetch;" and with a little bow, I swept into the corridor with an air as stately as her own.