“There were three gentlemen,” answered Lydia.
“Three gentlemen? Three men? Three—And you—and—” Mrs. Erwin fell back upon her pillow, and remained gazing at Lydia, with a sort of remote bewildered pity, as at perdition, not indeed beyond compassion, but far beyond help. Lydia's color had been coming and going, but now it settled to a clear white. Mrs. Erwin commanded herself sufficiently to resume: “And there were—there were—no other ladies?”
“No.”
“And you were—”
“I was the only woman on board,” replied Lydia. She rose abruptly, striking the edge of the table in her movement, and setting its china and silver jarring. “Oh, I know what you mean, aunt Josephine, but two days ago I couldn't have dreamt it! From the time the ship sailed till I reached this wicked place, there wasn't a word said nor a look looked to make me think I wasn't just as right and safe there as if I had been in my own room at home. They were never anything but kind and good to me. They never let me think that they could be my enemies, or that I must suspect them and be on the watch against them. They were Americans! I had to wait for one of your Europeans to teach me that,—for that officer who was here yesterday—”
“The cavaliere? Why, where—”
“He spoke to me in the cars, when Mr. Erwin was asleep! Had he any right to do so?”
“He would think he had, if he thought you were alone,” said Mrs. Erwin, plaintively. “I don't see how we could resent it. It was simply a mistake on his part. And now you see, Lydia—”
“Oh, I see how my coming the way I have will seem to all these people!” cried Lydia, with passionate despair. “I know how it will seem to that married woman who lets a man be in love with her, and that old woman who can't live with her husband because he's too good and kind, and that girl who swears and doesn't know who her father is, and that impudent painter, and that officer who thinks he has the right to insult women if he finds them alone! I wonder the sea doesn't swallow up a place where even Americans go to the theatre on the Sabbath!”
“Lydia, Lydia! It isn't so bad as it seems to you,” pleaded her aunt, thrown upon the defensive by the girl's outburst. “There are ever so many good and nice people in Venice, and I know them, too,—Italians as well as foreigners. And even amongst those you saw, Miss Landini is one of the kindest girls in the world, and she had just been to see her old teacher when we met her,—she half takes care of him; and Lady Fenleigh's a perfect mother to the poor; and I never was at the Countess Tatocka's except in the most distant way, at a ball where everybody went; and is it better to let your uncle go to the opera alone, or to go with him? You told me to go with him yourself; and they consider Sunday over, on the Continent, after morning service, any way!”