CHAPTER XIX
LADY HOLME never forgot that first evening at Casa Felice. The
strangeness of it was greater than the strangeness of any nightmare. When
she was shut up in her bedroom in London she had thought she realised all
the meaning of the word loneliness. Now she knew that then she had not
begun to realise it. For she had been in her own house, in the city which
contained a troop of her friends, in the city where she had reigned. And
although she knew that she would reign no more, she had not grasped the
exact meaning of that knowledge in London. She had known a fact but not
fully felt it. She had known what she now was but not fully felt what she
now was. Even when Fritz, muttering almost terrified exclamations, had
stumbled out of the bedroom, she had not heard the dull clamour of
finality as she heard it now.
She was an exile. She was an outcast among women. She was no longer a
beautiful woman, she was not even a plain woman--she was a
dreadful-looking human being.
The Italian servants by whom she was surrounded suddenly educated her in
the lore of exact knowledge of herself and her present situation.
Italians are the most charming of the nations, but Italians of the lower
classes are often very unreserved in the display of their most fugitive
sensations, their most passing moods. The men, especially when they are
young, are highly susceptible to beauty in women. They are also--and the
second emotion springs naturally enough from the first--almost childishly
averse from female ugliness.
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