"No!" she cried thickly. "No, no, no! Not you! Go away—please go!"
"I only wanted to help you, if I could," Lucinda explained, getting to her feet. "If you're unhappy—I'm so sorry——"
The movement must have been misinterpreted, for the girl sprang up like a threatened animal.
"I don't want your help!" she stormed throatily. "I don't want anything to do with you—only to be left alone!" She flung herself at Lucinda as if to thrust her out by force. "Go! go! go!" she screamed. Then the window slammed.
"Poor thing!" Lucinda told herself—"she must have heard...."
XXIV
There was at this time little room in Lucinda's inner life for other people's troubles, she was much too agreeably engrossed in doting on this radiant new avatar of Linda Lee, victress in a form of duel of which Summerlad was reputed a master who had never known defeat. Rumours current of his success with women had found her credulous and lenient; mortal vanity saw to that. It feeds on strange foods, vanity, it waxes fat on inconsistencies. Think as well as you will of yourself, you shall not find unacceptable the belief that one well loved by many has been laid low by love of you alone.... And indeed a great part of that indecision at which Lucinda in those days played so daintily was due to the knowledge, unformulated in her consciousness but none the less exercising constant influence on her moods, that she was less in love with Lynn than in love with being loved by Lynn Summerlad the idolized.
In many ways admirable, a fine animal who kept himself always exquisitely fit, intelligent enough to share or seem to share her every taste and prejudice, Lynn had laid a spell upon her mind no less than on her senses. The minor faults of which she had earlier been aware, the little things he sometimes did or said that jarred, he had amended. Or she was no longer competent to perceive them....
So she put away all care on account of the strange woman whose unhappiness had excited her quick compassion, and let fancy have its fling at the dissipation of thinking how blessed was her lot, how supremely distinguished as fortune's favorite she was who had everything, youth, beauty, health and riches, and to whom all things good were granted, love, friends, admiration and envy of the general, and—never to be misprized—a life, in its present phase, of vicissitudes highly diverting.