"If I could only do something!" she said to her mossy-smelling pillow. "And I owe her a good turn too, although maybe she doesn't deserve it. I wonder what I could do?"
XXXI. THE BREAKING OF THE SPELL
The spell was broken for Angela. She knew now, if she had not known before, that it was Nick Hilliard who lit the world for her with the light never seen on land or sea, where love is not. Some quality was gone from the sunshine, and the glory of the golden poppies had withered.
Back in San Francisco, living in the rooms which he had helped to make beautiful with daily gifts of flowers, she realized how completely Nick had meant for her the spirit of the West. It was because he had been with her that, from morning till night, she had thrilled with the joy of life and excited anticipation of each new day which had never failed or let her tire.
Every moment she missed him and wanted him, and would have given anything to call him back to her; but she had no right to call, for what had she to give worth his pain in coming?
Angela was an anxiety to Kate and a responsibility to Mr. Morehouse. The banker would have liked to send his friends to call upon Mrs. May, but she was in no mood to meet people. Then he suggested that she should go to Del Monte for the summer and watch the beginning of the new home, but she dismissed this idea, saying that as the architect had not yet even finished his plan it would be a long time before the house could reach an interesting stage.
"We all go somewhere in summer," Mr. Morehouse urged. Whereupon Angela merely shrugged her shoulders. "You who live here may want a change," she said. "I've had plenty of changes. I'm very happy where I am, thanks."
But she did not look happy, and Kate, who loved her, realized the alteration far more keenly than Mr. Morehouse, though even he felt vaguely that something had gone wrong with the Princess di Sereno. Kate, who knew well what a difference happiness could make in a woman's health and looks, guessed that the loss of her mistress's colour and spirits was connected with the disappearance of Hilliard. A paragraph she had read in that exciting number of the Illustrated London News had, together with some vague hints unconsciously dropped by Angela and a few words of the banker's overheard, set Kate's wits to working, and thus she arrived, through sympathy, at something like the truth. But Mr. Morehouse's diagnosis of the case had in it no such romantic ingredient as hopeless love.