She made an intense effort and uttered some reply. The boy was encouraged
and began to tell her about the beauties of the house, the gardens, the
chasm behind the piazza down which the waterfall rushed, to dive beneath
the house and lose itself in the lake. She tried to listen, but she could
not. The strangeness of her being alone, hidden behind a dense veil, of
her coming to such a retired house in the autumn to remain there in utter
solitude, with no object except that of being safe from the intrusion of
anyone who knew her, of being hidden from all watching eyes that had ever
looked upon her--the strangeness of it obsessed her, was both powerful
and unreal. That she should be one of those lonely women of whom the
world speaks with a lightly-contemptuous pity seemed incredible to her.
Yet what woman was lonelier than she?
The boat drew in toward the shore and she began to see the house more
plainly. It was large, and the flat facade was broken in the middle by an
open piazza with round arches and slender columns. This piazza divided
the house in two. The villa was in fact composed of two square buildings
connected together by it. From the boat, looking up, Lady Holme saw a
fierce mountain gorge rising abruptly behind the house. Huge cypresses
grew on its sides, towering above the slate roof, and she heard the loud
noise of falling water. It seemed to add to the weight of her desolation.
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