He had
painted her portrait. She had paid for it and--burnt it. She, the quiet
schoolgirl, the earnest postulant, the novice who had never thought of
her own face, who for a year had not seen it in a mirror or missed the
sight of it, knew herself now for a beauty, a charming figure of
importance in this strange, concrete little world where Hercules
entertained his guests. And then, to be despised by the one person who
occupied her thoughts, despised and thrust away at the very moment when
he confessed to loving her! It was a blow to the woman's pride which had
not consciously stooped to unworthiness, and a still sharper hurt to her
new vanity.
She wanted to show Vanno, if he still thought of her, that others burned
incense to her beauty, though he had not placed her on an altar. The
discomforts of the Villa Bella Vista mattered little to the girl who had
gone through a hard novitiate in a Scotch convent. She made her own bed
and dusted her room. She did not care what she ate; and she tried to
throw her whole heart into the life of the household, that amazing
household which was unlike anything she could have imagined out of a
disordered dream.
Always after coming to the Dauntreys' she continued to lose at the
Casino, often large sums, occasionally picking up a little, as if luck
hovered near, awaiting its cue to return, only to be frightened away
again. But after a few days' time, in which more than two hundred
thousand francs slipped through her fingers, Lady Dauntrey suggested
that Miss Grant should "rest" for a while, meantime letting Dauntrey
play his system for her benefit and with her capital.
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