Diana laughed her pretty soft laugh.
“No, indeed! Poor Pa! That would be terrible!—she’d make you seem so old if she were! But perhaps you wouldn’t mind as she’s so beautiful!”
Mr. May stared at her wrathfully with the feeling that he was being made fun of.
“She is beautiful!” he said, firmly. “Only a jealous woman would dare to question it!”
Diana laughed again.
“Very well, she is beautiful! Wig and all!” she said, and moved away, opening her parasol as she passed from the shadow of the cedar boughs into the full sun.
“She’s getting beyond herself!” thought her father, watching her as she went, and noting what he was pleased to consider “affectation” in her naturally graceful way of walking. “And if she once begins that sort of game, she’ll be unbearable! Nothing can be worse than an old maid who gets beyond herself or above herself! She’ll be fancying some man is in love with her next!”
He gave a snort of scorn and composed himself to sleep again; meanwhile Diana had left the garden and was walking at an easy pace, which was swift without seeming hurried, down to the sea shore. It was very lovely there at this particular afternoon hour,—the tide was coming in, and the long shining waves rolled up one after the other in smooth lines of silver on sand that shone in wet patches like purest gold. The air was soft and warm but not oppressive, and as the solitary woman lifted her eyes to the peaceful blue sky arched like a sheltering dome above the peaceful blue sea, her solitude was for the moment more intensified. More keenly than ever she felt that there was no one to whom she could look for so much as a loving word,—not in her own home, at any rate. Her friends were few; Sophy Lansing was one of the most intimate,—but Sophy lived such a life of activity, throwing her energies into so many channels, that it was not possible to get into very close or constant companionship with her.
“While I live,” she said to herself, deliberately, “I shall have no one to care for me—I must make up my mind to that. And when I die,—if I go to heaven there will be no one there who cares for me,—and, if I go to hell, no one there either!” She laughed at this idea, but there were tears in her eyes. “It’s curious not to have anyone on earth or in heaven or hell who wants you! I wonder if there are many like that! And yet—I’ve never done anything wicked or spiteful to deserve being left so unloved.”
She had come to a small, deep cove, picturesquely walled in by high masses of rock whose summits were gay with creeping plants, grass and flowers, and though the sea was calm, the pressure of the incoming tide through the narrow inlet made waves that were almost boisterous, as they rushed in and out with a musical splash and roar. It was hardly safe or prudent to walk further on. “Any of those waves could carry one off one’s feet in a minute,” she thought, and went upwards from the beach beyond the highest mark left by the fringes of the sea, where the fragments of an old broken boat made a very good seat. Here she rested awhile, allowing vague ideas of a possible future to drift through her brain. The prospect of a visit to Sophy Lansing seemed agreeable enough,—but she very well knew that it would be opposed by her parents,—that her mother would say she could not spare her,—and that her father would demand angrily: