The Countess sat down in a luxurious chair, and motioned me to sit close by her in another, but one smaller and lower.  We talked of many things, circling ever about ourselves.  Yet I could not keep the old farm out of my mind—­its simple manners, its severe code of morals, its labour and its pain.  Also there came another thought, the sense that all this had happened before—­the devil’s fear that I was not the first who had so sat alone beside the Countess and seen the obsequious movement of these well-trained servants.

“Tell me, Douglas,” at last the Countess said, glancing down kindly at me, “why you are so silent and distrait.  This is our first evening here, and yet you are sad and forgetful, even of me.”

What a blind fool I was not to see the innocence and love in her eyes!

“Countess—­” I began, and paused uncertain.

“Sir to you!” she returned, making me a little bow in acknowledgment of the title.

“Lucia,” I went on, taking no notice of her frivolity, “I thought—­I thought—­that is, I imagined—­that your brother—­that others would be here as well as I—­”

I got no further.  I saw something sweep across her face.  Her eyes darkened.  Her face paled.  The thin curved nostrils whitened at the edges.  I paused, astonished at the tempest I had aroused by my faltering stupidities.  Why could I not take what the gods gave?

“I see,” she said bitterly:  “you reproach me with bringing you here as my guest, alone.  You think I am bold and abandoned because I dreamed of an Eden here with friendship and truth as dwellers in it.  I saw a new and perfect life; and with a word, here in my own house, and before you have been an hour my guest, you insult me—­”

“Lucia, Lucia,” I pleaded, “I would not insult you for the world—­I would not think a thought—­speak a word—­dishonouring to you for my life—­”

“You have—­you have—­it is all ended—­broken!” she said, standing up—­“all broken and thrown down!”

She made with her hands the bitter gesture of breaking.

“Listen,” she said, while I stood amazed and silent.  “I am no girl.  I am older than you, and know the world.  It is because I dreamed I saw that which I thought truer and purer in you than the conventions of life that I asked you to come here—­”

“Lucia, Lucia, my lady, listen to me,” I pleaded, trying to take her hand.  She put me aside with the single swift, imperious movement which women use when their pride is deeply wounded.

“That lady”—­she pointed within to where the silent dame of years was tinkling unconcernedly on the keys—­“is my dead husband’s mother.  Surely she abundantly supplies the proprieties.  And now you—­you whom I thought I could trust, spoil my year—­spoil my life, slay in a moment my love with reproach and scorn!”

She walked to the door, turned and said—­“You, whom I trusted, have done this!” Then she threw out her hands in an attitude of despair and scorn, and disappeared.