“The place is full of old cats in caps who gossip with the chaplain. Shall you like--I mean, it would be different if--” She flamed up. “Do you suppose I care? It’s none of their business.” “Of course not; but you won’t get them to think so.” “They may think what they please.” He looked at her doubtfully. “It’s for you to decide.” “We’ll stay,” she repeated. Gannett, before they met, had made himself known as a successful writer of short stories and of a novel which had achieved the distinction of being widely discussed. The reviewers called him “promising,” and Lydia now accused herself of having too long interfered with the fulfilment of his promise. There was a special irony in the fact, since his passionate assurances that only the stimulus of her companionship could bring out his latent faculty had almost given the dignity of a “vocation” to her course: there had been moments when she had felt unable to assume, before posterity, the responsibility of thwarting his career. And, after all, he had not written a line since they had been together: his first desire to write had come from renewed contact with the world! Was it all a mistake then? Must the most intelligent choice work more disastrously than the blundering combinations of chance? Or was there a still more humiliating answer to her perplexities? His sudden impulse of activity so exactly coincided with her own wish to withdraw, for a time, from the range of his observation, that she wondered if he too were not seeking sanctuary from intolerable problems. “You must begin to-morrow!” she cried, hiding a tremor under the laugh with which she added, “I wonder if there’s any ink in the inkstand?” * * * * * Whatever else they had at the Hotel Bellosguardo, they had, as Miss Pinsent said, “a certain tone.” It was to Lady Susan Condit that they owed this inestimable benefit; an advantage ranking in Miss Pinsent’s opinion above even the lawn tennis courts and the resident chaplain. It was the fact of Lady Susan’s annual visit that made the hotel what it was. Miss Pinsent was certainly the last to underrate such a privilege:--“It’s so important, my dear, forming as we do a little family, that there should be some one to give _the tone_; and no one could do it better than Lady Susan--an earl’s daughter and a person of such determination. Dear Mrs. Ainger now--who really _ought_, you know, when Lady Susan’s away--absolutely refuses to assert herself.” Miss Pinsent sniffed derisively. “A bishop’s niece!--my dear, I saw her once actually give in to some South Americans--and before us all. She gave up her seat at table to oblige them--such a lack of dignity! Lady Susan spoke to her very plainly about it afterwards.” Miss Pinsent glanced across the lake and adjusted her auburn front.