People who stalk along through life with elevated noses, are not
pleasing or edifying spectacles."
His disquietude soon caused him to return to the hotel, in hopes
of seeing the object of his thoughts.
He had hardly reached the piazza before Ida appeared, dressed in a
plain walking suit. She hesitated a moment in the door-way as if
undecided in her course. A party of gay young people were just
starting on a stroll to a neighboring village. With apparent
hesitancy, she said to one of the young girls:
"I have an errand to the village; may I walk with you for company?"
"Oh, certainly," replied the girl, but evidently not welcoming this
addition to their party, and Ida went away with them, but not as
one of them, isolated more, however, by her own manner than by the
bearing of her companions.
The explanation of her action was this: on opening her drawer after
returning to her room, she found, with a sense of dismay--as if a
misfortune had occurred instead of an incident that gave a chance
for better thought--that in taking the opiate the night before,
she had replaced the cork in the phial insecurely, and that nearly
all its contents had oozed away.
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