"Well, I sha'n't."
And so she did!
Whose fault was it that we were left in such a predicament—that of the inexperienced girl, or the chaperon's? What is a chaperon for? Mrs. Whitney has treated me shamefully, shamefully! Here I am all by myself, and I don't know what to do.
Ah, well, I must play my own hand. She shall regret this night's work, if I marry rank or money.
It is so strange how every one prospers except poor, baffled, loveless me, who have the greatest gift of all. I wonder if it is really Nature's law that the very beautiful must suffer; if this is her way of equalizing the lot of the poor and plain and lowly; her law of compensation to make the splendid creatures walk lonely and in sorrow all their days while plain ones coo and are happy. Was Uncle Tim right about the little brown partridges?
If I were superstitious or easily disheartened, I should say—but I am neither! I shall succeed. I will take my place by right of beauty or die fighting! If I see Lord Strathay again, he shall marry me within a week. They shall call it "one of those romantic weddings."
I can't live here alone. I have nothing to fall back upon; nothing but a father who doesn't answer my letters, and Judge Baker who lectures me in polysyllables, and John Burke—poor old John; what a good fellow he is!—who simply loves me; and Mrs. Van Dam, who was my friend as long as she hoped to rise by my beauty to higher place, but who has headaches now; and Mrs. Marmaduke—
I don't understand her desertion.
Ah—yes, there is another, my constant companion now.
He is an old man, thin and sallow. He lies prone on the floor, staring at me with dead, sightless eyes. He whispers from muted lips "Delilah!" and the sound of it is in my ears day and night; day and night!