"No, we ought not. Most decidedly we ought not," she flashed back scornfully. "But we will!"
And without another word or glance she hastened away.
VI
Isabel could not sleep. In order to postpone the hour of solitude she had sat up late talking to Fisher, practising Portuguese with Joanninha, and writing letters to her few friends in England. Finally she had astounded Mrs. Baxter by asking to be told all about the early life of the callous young Viscountess Datton and by listening without a murmur to the details which the Excellent Creature multitudinously invented. But the moment came when Mrs. Baxter's love of bed overbore her love of hearing herself talk. She rang the bell and Jackson came in, yawning, with the candles.
When Isabel lay down she set the whole power of her will to the barricading of her mind against the day's cruel memories. But it was all in vain. Every word she had spoken to Antonio, every syllable of his replies, vibrated afresh in her ears, scorching them with shame. Twice or thrice she clenched her fist as if she would strike some invisible enemy or revenge herself on the author of her loss and humiliation. Sometimes her cheeks burned crimson: sometimes she felt all the blood ebb from them. Her spiritual anguish brought in its wake a physical pain, sickening and hardly bearable, like the pains after the first shock of a dizzy fall or a brutal blow. She seemed to be aching all over; and more than once she moaned aloud.
Even without her shame and grief Isabel could hardly have slept. All through the afternoon and evening the air had been growing sultrier and sultrier. Not once in England, not even during brazen August, had she known such a stifling heat. Both her windows stood wide open; but they seemed to be admitting fiery vapors rather than life-giving airs. Even the fine linen sheet was too hot and heavy to be endured. She flung it aside and lay with nothing to cover her save a plain night-robe of the thinnest Indian silk. At first she tossed from side to side; but so much exertion soon exhausted her, and she lay still, gasping for breath.
At length the heat became unendurable. She rose and went to the window. Two or three miles away, over the woods, over the abbey, beyond Antonio's farm, the surly Atlantic was growling his muffled growl through the sultry air. Quite near at hand the shrunken torrent was rumbling down through the underwoods. Isabel listened. The airy ocean and the seaward-hurrying brook seemed to invite her, and to be beckoning her with cool hands. She leaned out, fain to be a little nearer.
There was no moon, and the stars could not pierce the stagnant clouds. Yet the night was not solidly dark. The outlines of the taller trees could be traced against the sky, and the pavement which surrounded the guest-house glimmered like white limestone.
Isabel was suddenly filled with an overmastering desire to break her prison walls and to walk free under the open sky. Apart from its bitter associations she would have lacked courage to visit the pool and the cascade in the dead of night; for the narrow path thither wound in and out of somber thickets. But the broad way, broad enough for a carriage, which ran down from the guest-house to the abbey, and thence, through the avenue of camellias, to the principal gate had no terrors for a soul almost untroubled by superstitious fears. It seemed to the half-stifled, heart-sick Isabel that if she could escape from the house unheard by Jackson and Mrs. Baxter she might find life and healing in those ampler spaces. She did not admit to herself that the broad path and, especially, the paved space in front of the abbey attracted her because they were rich in unembittered memories of hours with Antonio. Room, more room; air, more air: she thought she wanted nothing besides.