She saw, too, and for the first time, how lonely she was in the world, and a deep and burning longing for real love and sympathy took possession of her.  She had friends, of course, as young girls have, of much her own age and not unlike her in their inexperienced ideas of life.  But there was not one of them at Sorrento, nor had she met any one among the many acquaintances she had made, to whom she would care to turn.  Even her own intimate associates from childhood, who were far away in Sicily, or travelling elsewhere, would not have satisfied her.  They could not have understood her, their answers to her questions would have seemed foolish and worthless, and they would have tormented her with questions of their own, inopportune, importunate, tiresome.  She herself did not know that what she craved was the love or the friendship of one strong, honest man.

It was strange to find out suddenly how wide was the breach which separated her from her mother, with whom she had lived so happily throughout her childhood and early youth, with whom she had agreed—­or rather, who had agreed with her—­on the whole almost without a discussion.  It was hard to find in her now so little warmth of heart, so little power to understand, above all such a display of determination and such quiet force in argument.  Very indolent women are sometimes very deceptive in regard to the will they hold in reserve, but Beatrice could not have believed that her mother could influence her as she had done.  She reflected that it had surely been within the limits of the Marchesa’s choice to take her daughter’s side so soon as she had seen that the latter had mistaken her own feelings.  She need not have agreed with San Miniato, on that fatal evening at Tragara, that the marriage was definitely settled, until she had at least exchanged a word with Beatrice herself.

The future looked black enough on that hot summer morning.  The girl was to be tied for life to a man she despised and hated, to a man who did not even care for her, as she was now convinced, to a man with a past of which she knew little and of which the few incidents she had learned repelled her now, instead of attracting her.  She fancied how he had spoken to those other women, much as he had spoken to her, perhaps a little more eloquently as, perhaps, he had not been thinking of their fortunes but of themselves, but still always in that high-comedy tone with the studied gesture and the cadenced intonation.  She did not know whether they deserved her pity, those two whom he pretended to have loved, but she was ready to pity them, nameless as they were.  The one was dead, the other, at least, had been wise enough to forget him in time.