My wonder increased. Could it be that Lucia and I were alone in this great castle! I cannot tell whether the thought brought me more happiness or discontent. Clearly, I was the only guest. Was I to remain so, or would others join us after dinner? My heart beat faint and tumultuously. At random I answered to Lucia's questionings about my journey. My slow-moving Northern intelligence began to form questions which I must ask. Through the laughing charm of my lady's face and the burning radiance of her eyes, there grew into plainness against the tapestry the sad, pale face of my mother and her clear, consistent eyes. I talked—I answered—I listened—all through a humming chaos. For the teaching of the moorland farm, the ethic of the Sabbath nights lit by a single candle and sanctified by the chanted psalm and the open Book, possessed me. It was the domination of the Puritan base, and most bitterly I resented, while I could not prevent, its hold upon me.
Dinner was over. We took our way into a drawing-room, divided into two parts by a screen which was drawn half-way. In the other half of the great room stood an ancient piano, and to this our ancient lady betook herself.
The Countess sat down in a luxurious chair, and motioned me to sit close by her in another, but one smaller and lower. We talked of many things, circling ever about ourselves. Yet I could not keep the old farm out of my mind—its simple manners, its severe code of morals, its labour and its pain. Also there came another thought, the sense that all this had happened before—the devil's fear that I was not the first who had so sat alone beside the Countess and seen the obsequious movement of these well-trained servants.
"Tell me, Douglas," at last the Countess said, glancing down kindly at me, "why you are so silent and distrait. This is our first evening here, and yet you are sad and forgetful, even of me."
What a blind fool I was not to see the innocence and love in her eyes!
"Countess—" I began, and paused uncertain.
"Sir to you!" she returned, making me a little bow in acknowledgment of the title.
"Lucia," I went on, taking no notice of her frivolity, "I thought—I thought—that is, I imagined—that your brother—that others would be here as well as I—"
I got no further. I saw something sweep across her face. Her eyes darkened. Her face paled. The thin curved nostrils whitened at the edges. I paused, astonished at the tempest I had aroused by my faltering stupidities. Why could I not take what the gods gave?
"I see," she said bitterly: "you reproach me with bringing you here as my guest, alone. You think I am bold and abandoned because I dreamed of an Eden here with friendship and truth as dwellers in it. I saw a new and perfect life; and with a word, here in my own house, and before you have been an hour my guest, you insult me—"