The boat stopped at a flight of worn stone steps. One of the boys sprang
out and rang a bell, and presently an Italian man-servant opened a tall
iron gate set in a crumbling stone arch, and showed more stone steps
leading upward between walls covered with dripping lichen. The boat boy
came to help Lady Holme out.
For a moment she did not move. The dreamlike feeling had come upon her
with such force that her limbs refused to obey her will. The sound of the
falling water in the mountain gorge had sent her farther adrift into the
grey, unpeopled eternity, into the vague chaos. But the boy held out his
hand, took hers. The strong clasp recalled her. She got up. The Italian
man-servant preceded her up the steps into a long garden built up high
above the lake on a creeper-covered wall. To the left was the house door.
She stood still for an instant looking out over the wide expanse of
unruffled grey water. Then, putting her hand up to her veil as if to keep
it more closely over her face, she slowly went into the house.
CHAPTER XVIII
DESPAIR had driven Lady Holme to Casa Felice. When she had found that the
accident had disfigured her frightfully, and that the disfigurement would
be permanent, she had at first thought of killing herself. But then she
had been afraid. Life had abruptly become a horror to her. She felt that
it must be a horror to her always. Yet she dared not leave it then, in
her home in London, in the midst of the sights and sounds connected with
her former happiness.
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