Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/139

 Latins are horrible to their servants. Faustino treats them like dogs.

She found herself in the loggia, watching, watching. "Well," she thought, "I'm here again, watching, without knowing it. There's no use going back now."

She began to see herself all at once as another woman whom she regarded from a great distance.

It was a funny thing what life did to you. Who would have thought that the girl being married in the garden at Newport would have turned into the woman waiting in the loggia for Oreste? One would have said that there was no connection between the two, but the chain was simple and clear enough. It fitted together link by link, beginning with Faustino. If a woman had a husband like Faustino what could you expect of her? It wasn't in her nature to be a religieuse, wearing black and doing good deeds. After what had happened with Faustino she wanted only life and more life. He hadn't broken her. Only three months she had lived with him, but that was long enough—too long, because it was long enough for her to conceive a child, not a child, but a monster, an idiot. Her own good blood hadn't been strong enough to overcome the taint of Faustino's life and blood. It wasn't easy to think that your first-born was a cripple and an idiot, and a grown man now. He must be twenty-six, shut up always at Venterollo with his father. She hadn't seen him in years. How many? Well, she wouldn't think of that. After all, he wasn't much more insane than Faustino himself.

She'd think instead of Victor because Victor was