The Barkleys' visitors had dispersed, and Mrs. Lidcote, completely
restored by her two days' rest, found herself, on the following Monday
alone with her children and Miss Suffern.
There was a note of jubilation in the air, for the party had "gone
off" so extraordinarily well, and so completely, as it appeared, to the
satisfaction of Mrs. Lorin Boulger, that Wilbour's early appointment
to Rome was almost to be counted on. So certain did this seem that the
prospect of a prompt reunion mitigated the distress with which Leila
learned of her mother's decision to return almost immediately to
Italy. No one understood this decision; it seemed to Leila absolutely
unintelligible that Mrs. Lidcote should not stay on with them till their
own fate was fixed, and Wilbour echoed her astonishment.
"Why shouldn't you, as Leila says, wait here till we can all pack up and
go together?"
Mrs. Lidcote smiled her gratitude with her refusal. "After all, it's not
yet sure that you'll be packing up."
"Oh, you ought to have seen Wilbour with Mrs. Boulger," Leila triumphed.
"No, you ought to have seen Leila with her," Leila's husband exulted.
Miss Suffern enthusiastically appended: "I _do_ think inviting Harriet
Fresbie was a stroke of genius!"
"Oh, we'll be with you soon," Leila laughed. "So soon that it's really
foolish to separate."
But Mrs. Lidcote held out with the quiet firmness which her daughter
knew it was useless to oppose. After her long months in India, it was
really imperative, she declared, that she should get back to Florence
and see what was happening to her little place there; and she had been
so comfortable on the _Utopia_ that she had a fancy to return by the
same ship. There was nothing for it, therefore, but to acquiesce in her
decision and keep her with them till the afternoon before the day of
the _Utopia's_ sailing. This arrangement fitted in with certain projects
which, during her two days' seclusion, Mrs. Lidcote had silently
matured. It had become to her of the first importance to get away as
soon as she could, and the little place in Florence, which held her
past in every fold of its curtains and between every page of its books,
seemed now to her the one spot where that past would be endurable to
look upon.
She was not unhappy during the intervening days. The sight of Leila's
well-being, the sense of Leila's tenderness, were, after all, what she
had come for; and of these she had had full measure. Leila had never
been happier or more tender; and the contemplation of her bliss, and the
enjoyment of her affection, were an absorbing occupation for her mother.
But they were also a sharp strain on certain overtightened chords, and
Mrs. Lidcote, when at last she found herself alone in the New York hotel
to which she had returned the night before embarking, had the feeling
that she had just escaped with her life from the clutch of a giant hand.
She had refused to let her daughter come to town with her; she had even
rejected Susy Suffern's company. She wanted no viaticum but that of her
own thoughts; and she let these come to her without shrinking from them
as she sat in the same high-hung sitting-room in which, just a week
before, she and Franklin Ide had had their memorable talk.
She had promised her friend to let him hear from her, but she had not
kept her promise. She knew that he had probably come back from Chicago,
and that if he learned of her sudden decision to return to Italy it
would be impossible for her not to see him before sailing; and as she
wished above all things not to see him she had kept silent, intending to
send him a letter from the steamer.
There was no reason why she should wait till then to write it. The
actual moment was more favorable, and the task, though not agreeable,
would at least bridge over an hour of her lonely evening. She went up
to the writing-table, drew out a sheet of paper and began to write his
name. And as she did so, the door opened and he came in.
The words she met him with were the last she could have imagined herself
saying when they had parted. "How in the world did you know that I was
here?"
He caught her meaning in a flash. "You didn't want me to, then?" He
stood looking at her. "I suppose I ought to have taken your silence as
meaning that. But I happened to meet Mrs. Wynn, who is stopping here,
and she asked me to dine with her and Charlotte, and Charlotte's
young man. They told me they'd seen you arriving this afternoon, and I
couldn't help coming up."
There was a pause between them, which Mrs. Lidcote at last surprisingly
broke with the exclamation: "Ah, she _did_ recognize me, then!"
"Recognize you?" He stared. "Why--"
"Oh, I saw she did, though she never moved an eyelid. I saw it by
Charlotte's blush. The child has the prettiest blush. I saw that her
mother wouldn't let her speak to me."
Ide put down his hat with an impatient laugh. "Hasn't Leila cured you of
your delusions?"
She looked at him intently. "Then you don't think Margaret Wynn meant to
cut me?"
"I think your ideas are absurd."
She paused for a perceptible moment without taking this up; then she
said, at a tangent: "I'm sailing tomorrow early. I meant to write to
you--there's the letter I'd begun."
Ide followed her gesture, and then turned his eyes back to her face.
"You didn't mean to see me, then, or even to let me know that you were
going till you'd left?"
"I felt it would be easier to explain to you in a letter--"
"What in God's name is there to explain?" She made no reply, and he
pressed on: "It can't be that you're worried about Leila, for Charlotte
Wynn told me she'd been there last week, and there was a big
party arriving when she left: Fresbies and Gileses, and Mrs. Lorin
Boulger--all the board of examiners! If Leila has passed _that_, she's
got her degree."
Mrs. Lidcote had dropped down into a corner of the sofa where she had
sat during their talk of the week before. "I was stupid," she began
abruptly. "I ought to have gone to Ridgefield with Susy. I didn't see
till afterward that I was expected to."
"You were expected to?"
"Yes. Oh, it wasn't Leila's fault. She suffered--poor darling; she was
distracted. But she'd asked her party before she knew I was arriving."
"Oh, as to that--" Ide drew a deep breath of relief. "I can understand
that it must have been a disappointment not to have you to herself just
at first. But, after all, you were among old friends or their children:
the Gileses and Fresbies--and little Charlotte Wynn." He paused a moment
before the last name, and scrutinized her hesitatingly. "Even if they
came at the wrong time, you must have been glad to see them all at
Leila's."