There was no sign of timidity about either of them here. If
they had got out of their shells so immediately, at the very first
contact, unless she checked them they would soon begin to press upon
her, and then good-bye to her dream of thirty restful, silent days,
lying unmolested in the sun, getting her feathers smooth again, not
being spoken to, not waited on, not grabbed at and monopolized, but
just recovering from the fatigue, the deep and melancholy fatigue, of
the too much.
Besides, there was Mrs. Fisher. She too must be checked. Lady
Caroline had started two days earlier than had been arranged for two
reasons: first, because she wished to arrive before the others in order
to pick out the room or rooms she preferred, and second, because she
judged it likely that otherwise she would have to travel with Mrs.
Fisher. She did not want to travel with Mrs. Fisher. She did not want
to arrive with Mrs. Fisher. She saw no reason whatever why for a
single moment she should have to have anything at all to do with Mrs.
Fisher.
But unfortunately Mrs. Fisher also was filled with a desire to
get to San Salvatore first and pick out the room or rooms she
preferred, and she and Lady Caroline had after all traveled together.
As early as Calais they began to suspect it; in Paris they feared it;
at Modane they knew it; at Mezzago they concealed it, driving out to
Castagneto in two separate flys, the nose of the one almost touching
the back of the other the whole way.
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