It was true
that the Princess entertained the cheerful view more often than not,
which was perhaps fortunate for her daughter; but in her heart the
young girl felt that she would have to rely on her own common sense to
form any opinion of life, and as her position became more difficult,
while the future did not grow more defined, she tried to think
connectedly about it all, and to reach some useful conclusion.
It was not easy. In her native city, living under the roof of people
who held a strong position in the society to which she belonged,
though they had not been born to it, she was as completely isolated as
if she had been suddenly taken away and set down amongst strangers in
Australia. She was as lonely as she could have been on a desert
island.
The Volterra couple were radically, constitutionally, congenitally
different from the men and women she had seen in her mother's house.
She could not have told exactly where the difference lay, for she was
too young, and perhaps too simple. She did not instinctively like
them, but she had never really felt any affection for her mother
either, and her own brother and sister had always repelled her. Her
mother had sometimes treated her like a toy, but more often as a
nuisance and a hindrance in life, to be kept out of the way as much,
as possible, and married off on the first opportunity.
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