down into shady valleys, Stanton stolidly smoking, and Ida nursing
her petty wrath. Two flitting ghosts hastening to escape from the
light of day, could not have seen less, or have felt less sympathy
with the warm beautiful scenes through which they were passing.
There is no insulation so perfect as that of small, selfish natures
preoccupied with a pique.

When, late in the afternoon, her cousin, with mock politeness, assisted
her to alight at the entrance of the hotel, Ida was compelled to
feel that she had indeed been the chief victim of her own spite.
but, with the usual logic of human nature, she never thought of
blaming herself, and her resentment was chiefly directed against
the man whose every word and glance, although he was but a stranger,
had seemed to possess a power to annoy and wound from the first.
She felt an almost venomous desire to retaliate; but he appeared
invulnerable in his quiet and easy superiority, while she, who
expected, as a matter of course, that all masculine thoughts should
follow her admiringly, had been compelled to see that his critical
eyes had detected that in her which had awakened his contempt.

"I'll teach him this evening, when my gentlemen friends arrive,
how ridiculous are his airs," she muttered, as she went to her room
and sought to enhance her beauty by all the arts of which she was
the mistress. "I'll show him that there are plenty who can see
what he cannot, or will not. Because he is an artist, he need not
think he can face me out of the knowledge of my beauty, the existence
of which I have been assured of by so many eyes and tongues ever
since I can remember."

When she came down to await the arrival of the stages and carriages,