"No," she said, briefly to each.
"If you knew what people were saying and surmising you would not continue to make a spectacle of yourself," said her cousin, through the closed door.
"That is one reason why I do not come down," she replied. "I'm not in the mood to make a spectacle of myself. I have been shown how one perfect member of society regards me, and I am not equal to meeting any more faultless people to-night."
"Oh, nonsense!" cried Stanton, irritably. "You must come down."
"Break in the door then, and carry me down," was the sharp reply.
With a muttered oath he descended to the supper-room, and his moody and absent manner revealed to Mrs. Mayhew and Van Berg that his interview with his cousin had been anything but satisfactory.
For a time the artist seemed rather "distrait" also, as if a memory were troubling him. He often looked around when any one entered, and his eyes at times rested on Ida's vacant chair. But he soon passed under the spell of Jennie Burton's genial talk, which seemingly glowed with the sunshine that had enveloped her during her quest of the roses, and the poor girl, who was fairly quivering with pain because of his significant act and words on the piazza, was forgotten.
She knew she was forgotten. The hum of voices, the cheerful clatter from the lighted supper-room, came up to her darkening apartment, and only increased her sense of loneliness and isolation. Her quick ear caught Van Berg's mellow laugh, evoked by one of Miss Burton's sallies.
It is a dreary sensation to find one's self wholly forgotten by mere acquaintances; but to find that we have no place in the thoughts of those we love, seems in a certain sense like being annihilated. But for poor Ida was reserved a deeper suffering still, since she believed that the man she loved did not dismiss her from his mind indifferently, but rather with aversion and disgust.
She felt her isolation terribly. To whom could she turn in her trouble? The thought of her father was both a reproach and a humiliation. He was drifting hopelessly, and almost unresistingly, towards final wreck, and, so far from seeking to restrain, she had added to the evil impetus. She shrank from the very idea of confiding in her garrulous, superficial mother. She felt that her cousin detested as well as despised her. The flattered girl, who a little before thought the world was at her feet, now felt friendless and alone, scarcely tolerated by her own family, and scorned by others.