ever since I can
remember."

"Because," said Mrs. Arbuthnot, smiling and raising a warning
forefinger, "it won't last."

Then Lady Caroline began to be afraid these two were originals.
If so, she would be bored. Nothing bored her so much as people who
insisted on being original, who came and buttonholed her and kept her
waiting while they were being original. And the one who admired her--
it would be tiresome if she dogged her about in order to look at her.
What she wanted of this holiday was complete escape from all she had
had before, she wanted the rest of complete contrast. Being admired,
being dogged, wasn't contrast, it was repetition; and as for originals,
to find herself shut up with two on the top of a precipitous hill in a
medieval castle built for the express purpose of preventing easy goings
out and in, would not, she was afraid, be especially restful. Perhaps
she had better be a little less encouraging. They had seemed such
timid creatures, even the dark one--she couldn't remember their
names--that day at the club, that she had felt it quite safe to be very
friendly. Here they had come out of their shells; already; indeed, at
once. There was no sign of timidity about either of them here. If
they had got out of their shells so immediately, at the very first
contact, unless she checked them they would soon begin to press upon
her, and then good-bye to her dream of thirty restful, silent days,
lying unmolested in the sun, getting her feathers smooth again, not
being spoken to, not waited on, not grabbed at and monopolized, but
just recovering from the fatigue, the deep and melancholy fatigue, of
the too much.

Besides, there was Mrs. Fisher. She too must be checked. Lady
Caroline had started two days earlier than had been arranged for two
reasons: first, because she wished to arrive before the others in order
to pick out the room or rooms she preferred, and second, because she
judged it likely that otherwise she would have to travel with Mrs.
Fisher. She did not want to travel with Mrs. Fisher. She did not want
to arrive with Mrs. Fisher. She saw no reason whatever why for a
single moment she should have to have anything at all to do with Mrs.
Fisher.

But unfortunately Mrs. Fisher also was filled with a desire to
get to San Salvatore first and pick out the room or rooms she
preferred, and she and Lady Caroline had after all traveled together.
As early as Calais they began to suspect it; in