She thought of the admiration she had excited in the schoolgirls, and in their elders, the two ladies in deep mourning. A flicker of contempt passed over her countenance.
What was the admiration of three half-grown girls to her? Salome had attracted her notice more than Janet. She had observed Salome, whilst unseen by her, and thought she had made out her character—ordinary, duty-loving, conscientious, narrow. A character of all others most distasteful to Artemisia. She put her hands to her brow and pressed them about it. 'So, so,' she muttered. 'To have always an iron crown screwed tight round the brain. Insufferable!'
Then she shivered. The night air was cold in the Alps at that elevation. She fetched a light shawl of Barège wool and wrapped it round her, over her bare arms, and leaned both elbows of the folded arms on the window. Her thoughts again recurred to Salome, and she tried to scheme out the sort of life that would commend itself to such as she—a snug English home, with a few quiet, respectable servants, and a quiet, respectable gardener; a respectable and quiet husband, and a pony-trap, in the shafts of which trotted a quiet and respectable cob; improving magazines and sober books read in the house; occasional dull parties given, at which the clergy would predominate, and sing feeble songs and talk about their parishes; and then one or two quiet, respectable children would arrive who would learn their lessons exactly, and strum on the piano at their scales. Artemisia's lips curled with disgust.
Her hands clenched under the shawl, and she uttered an exclamation of anger and loathing.
And what, she considered, had she herself to look to? She gazed dreamily at the stars, and tears rose in her eyes and trickled down her cheeks. Then, ashamed of her weakness, she left the window and paced her room—up and down, up and down—and it was as though through the open window, out of the night, streamed in dark forms, ugly recollections, uncomfortable thoughts, that crowded the room, filled every corner, occupied every nook—came in thicker, and darker, and more horrible, and she went to the window with a gasp of fear and shut out the night wind and the gleam of the stars, hoping at the same time to stop the entry of those haunting memories and hideous shapes.
The street window would not shut them out; the room was full of them, and their presence oppressed her. She could endure them no more. She struck a light and kindled the candles in the room.
What was that on her dressing-table? Only a little glass full of wild strawberry-leaves and fruit one of the admiring Labarte girls had picked and given to her and insisted on her taking to her room.
Artemisia laughed. She took the strawberries out of the water. She unclasped a necklet that was about her throat on which were Roman pearls. She put it around her head, and thrust the strawberry-leaves in between the pearls, then looked at herself in the glass and laughed, and as she laughed all the shadow-figures and ghostly recollections went tumbling one over the other out of the room by the keyhole, leaving her alone laughing, part ironically, part triumphantly, before the glass, looking at herself in her extemporized coronet.
CHAPTER XL.
TWO MEN.