plainness with
brutality, with a manner almost of personal offence. They often shrink
from personal ugliness as Englishmen seldom do, like children shrinking
from something abnormal--a frightening dwarf, a spectre.

Now that Lady Holme had reached the "hiding-place" for which she had
longed, she resolved to be brutal with herself. Till now she had almost
perpetually concealed her disfigured face. Even her servants had not
seen it. But in this lonely house, among these strangers, she knew that
the inevitable moment was come when she must begin the new life, the
terrible life that was henceforth to be hers. In her bedroom she took
off her hat and veil, and without glancing into the glass she came
downstairs. In the hall she met the butler. She saw him start.

"Can I have tea?" she said, looking at him steadily.

"Yes, signora," he answered, looking down.

"In the piazza, please."

She went out through the open door into the piazza. The boy who had sung
in the boat was there, watering some geraniums in pots. As she came out
he glanced up curiously, at the same time pulling off his hat. When he
saw her his mouth gaped, and an expression of pitiless repulsion came
into his eyes. It died out almost instantaneously, and he smiled and
began to speak about the flowers. But Lady Holme had received her
education. She knew what she was to youth that instinctively loves
beauty.

She sat down in a cane chair. It seemed to her as if people were
scourging her with thongs of steel, as if she were bleeding from the
strokes.

She looked out across the lake.

The butler brought tea and put it beside her. She did not hear him
come or go. Behind her the waterfall roared down between the cypresses.
Before her the lake spread out its grey, unruffled surface. And this was
the baptism of Casa Felice, her baptism into a new life. Her agony was
the more intense because she had never been an intellectual woman, had
never lived the inner life. Always she had depended on outward things.
Always she had been accustomed to bustle, movement, excitement,
perpetual intercourse with people who paid her homage. Always she had
lived for the world, and worshipped, because she had seen those around
her worshipping, the body.

And now all was taken from her. Without warning, without a moment
for preparation, she was cast down into Hell. Even her youth was made
useless to her.

When she thought of that she began to cry, sitting there by the stone
b