Surely men only stared like that at pretty girls or attractive girls?
She wished that she knew whether she were really pretty or not.
In a very little while Lydia lost the sense of novelty, and began to feel as though she had always been independent.
She soon found that her life at Madame Elena’s and her life at the boarding-house had both become quite real to her, and very interesting. Each was absolutely separate from the other, but both made up a sum of experiences that absorbed and excited her.
People were extraordinarily interesting.
For all her capability and astonishing effect of maturity, Lydia was not quite nineteen years old, and it was only much later on that she realized how entirely her interest in her fellow-creatures had confined itself to the effect produced upon them by the personality of Lydia Raymond.
IX
There were wheels within wheels at Madame Elena’s establishment. Romantic friendships for one another amongst Madame Elena’s “young ladies,” sudden desperate quarrels and equally desperate reconciliations, all formed part of the fabric of everyday life, and afforded discussion at the midday dinner in the basement.
The girls, as Miss Graham had said, were all catered for.
“Don’t be afraid to come again,” Mrs. Entwhistle, the housekeeper, would exclaim jovially from the head of the table, acting, it was understood, under direct orders from Madame Ribeiro, whom the girls called Old Madam.