Manslaughter

								

shut up--of being one of a community--that the plan had been given up.
She would have married anyone in order to be free, but being already
uncommonly free she rebelled at the idea of giving up her individuality
by marriage, particularly by marriage with Ilseboro. She broke her
engagement. Ilseboro had loved her and made himself disagreeable. She
never forgot the parting curse he put upon her.
"The trouble with being such a damned bully as you are, my dear Lydia,"
he said, "is that you'll always get such second-rate playmates."
She answered that no one ought to know better than he did. His manner to
her servants had long secretly shocked her. He spoke to them without one
shade of humanity in his tone, yet oddly enough they all liked him
except the chauffeur, who was an American and couldn't bear him, feeling
the very essence of class superiority in that tone.
A few months later she showed an English illustrated to Miss Bennett.
"A picture of the girl Ilseboro is going to marry."
There was a pause while Miss Bennett read those romantic words: "A
marriage has been arranged and will shortly take place between George
Frederick Albert Reade, Marquis of Ilseboro, and----"
"She looks like a lady," said Miss Bennett.
"She looks like a rabbit," said Lydia. "Just think how Freddy will order
her about!"
It was not in her nature to feel remorse for her well-considered
actions, and she soon forgot that Ilseboro had ever existed, except for
certain things she had learned from him--a way of being silent while
people explained to you you couldn't do something you intended to do,
and then doing it instead of arguing about it, as had been her old
habit; and an excellent manner with butlers too.
Her foot pressed gently on the accelerator, when the road became
straight, holding the car now at forty miles. On either side of the road
purple cabbages grew like a tufted carpet to the very edge of the
macadam, without fences or hedges to protect them. There was enough mist
in the autumn air to magnify the low hills along the Sound to an
imposingly vague bulk, and to turn the cloudless sky to a threatening
bluish gray. In every other direction the flat, fertile, sandy plains of
Long Island stretched uninterruptedly.
It was really a beautiful afternoon--too beautiful to spend playing
bridge in a stuffy room. It might be more sensible, she thought, to
break up the party, kidnap Bobby and drive him over to sit on the edge
of the water and watch the moon rise; only she rather feared the moon
was over. Of course she was dining at the Leonard Piers' that evening,
but it was a party eminently chuckable--that is to say, she was going to
please them rather than herself. Anyhow, she would have Eleanor move the
bridge table out on the terrace. Eleanor was so stupid about preferring
to play indoors.
A minute figure, smaller than a man's hand, flashed into the little
mirror at her left. Was it--no--yes? A bicycle policeman! Well, she