第 五十一 章 · Chapter LI

The Countess was not banished, but she felt the insecurity of her tenure

of her brother’s hospitality. A week after this incident Isabel received

a telegram from England, dated from Gardencourt and bearing the stamp of

Mrs. Touchett’s authorship. “Ralph cannot last many days,” it ran, “and

if convenient would like to see you. Wishes me to say that you must come

only if you’ve not other duties. Say, for myself, that you used to talk

a good deal about your duty and to wonder what it was; shall be curious

to see whether you’ve found it out. Ralph is really dying, and there’s

no other company.” Isabel was prepared for this news, having received

from Henrietta Stackpole a detailed account of her journey to England

with her appreciative patient. Ralph had arrived more dead than alive,

but she had managed to convey him to Gardencourt, where he had taken to

his bed, which, as Miss Stackpole wrote, he evidently would never leave

again. She added that she had really had two patients on her hands

instead of one, inasmuch as Mr. Goodwood, who had been of no earthly

use, was quite as ailing, in a different way, as Mr. Touchett.

Afterwards she wrote that she had been obliged to surrender the field to

Mrs. Touchett, who had just returned from America and had promptly given

her to understand that she didn’t wish any interviewing at Gardencourt.

Isabel had written to her aunt shortly after Ralph came to Rome, letting

her know of his critical condition and suggesting that she should

lose no time in returning to Europe. Mrs. Touchett had telegraphed an

acknowledgement of this admonition, and the only further news Isabel

received from her was the second telegram I have just quoted.

Isabel stood a moment looking at the latter missive; then, thrusting it

into her pocket, she went straight to the door of her husband’s study.

Here she again paused an instant, after which she opened the door and

went in. Osmond was seated at the table near the window with a folio

volume before him, propped against a pile of books. This volume was open

at a page of small coloured plates, and Isabel presently saw that he

had been copying from it the drawing of an antique coin. A box of

water-colours and fine brushes lay before him, and he had already

transferred to a sheet of immaculate paper the delicate, finely-tinted

disk. His back was turned toward the door, but he recognised his wife

without looking round.

“Excuse me for disturbing you,” she said.

“When I come to your room I always knock,” he answered, going on with

his work.

“I forgot; I had something else to think of. My cousin’s dying.”

“Ah, I don’t believe that,” said Osmond, looking at his drawing through

a magnifying glass. “He was dying when we married; he’ll outlive us

all.”

Isabel gave herself no time, no thought, to appreciate the careful

cynicism of this declaration; she simply went on quickly, full of

her own intention “My aunt has telegraphed for me; I must go to

Gardencourt.”

“Why must you go to Gardencourt?” Osmond asked in the tone of impartial

curiosity.

“To see Ralph before he dies.”

To this, for some time, he made no rejoinder; he continued to give his

chief attention to his work, which was of a sort that would brook no

negligence. “I don’t see the need of it,” he said at last. “He came to

see you here. I didn’t like that; I thought his being in Rome a great

mistake. But I tolerated it because it was to be the last time you

should see him. Now you tell me it’s not to have been the last. Ah,

you’re not grateful!”

“What am I to be grateful for?”

Gilbert Osmond laid down his little implements, blew a speck of dust

from his drawing, slowly got up, and for the first time looked at his

wife. “For my not having interfered while he was here.”

“Oh yes, I am. I remember perfectly how distinctly you let me know you

didn’t like it. I was very glad when he went away.”

“Leave him alone then. Don’t run after him.”

Isabel turned her eyes away from him; they rested upon his little

drawing. “I must go to England,” she said, with a full consciousness

that her tone might strike an irritable man of taste as stupidly

obstinate.

“I shall not like it if you do,” Osmond remarked.

“Why should I mind that? You won’t like it if I don’t. You like nothing

I do or don’t do. You pretend to think I lie.”

Osmond turned slightly pale; he gave a cold smile. “That’s why you must

go then? Not to see your cousin, but to take a revenge on me.”

“I know nothing about revenge.”

“I do,” said Osmond. “Don’t give me an occasion.”

“You’re only too eager to take one. You wish immensely that I would

commit some folly.”

“I should be gratified in that case if you disobeyed me.”

“If I disobeyed you?” said Isabel in a low tone which had the effect of

mildness.

“Let it be clear. If you leave Rome to-day it will be a piece of the

most deliberate, the most calculated, opposition.”

“How can you call it calculated? I received my aunt’s telegram but three

minutes ago.”

“You calculate rapidly; it’s a great accomplishment. I don’t see why we

should prolong our discussion; you know my wish.” And he stood there as

if he expected to see her withdraw.

But she never moved; she couldn’t move, strange as it may seem; she

still wished to justify herself; he had the power, in an extraordinary

degree, of making her feel this need. There was something in her

imagination he could always appeal to against her judgement. “You’ve no

reason for such a wish,” said Isabel, “and I’ve every reason for going.

I can’t tell you how unjust you seem to me. But I think you know. It’s

your own opposition that’s calculated. It’s malignant.”

She had never uttered her worst thought to her husband before, and the

sensation of hearing it was evidently new to Osmond. But he showed no

surprise, and his coolness was apparently a proof that he had believed

his wife would in fact be unable to resist for ever his ingenious

endeavour to draw her out. “It’s all the more intense then,” he

answered. And he added almost as if he were giving her a friendly

counsel: “This is a very important matter.” She recognised that; she

was fully conscious of the weight of the occasion; she knew that between

them they had arrived at a crisis. Its gravity made her careful; she

said nothing, and he went on. “You say I’ve no reason? I have the very

best. I dislike, from the bottom of my soul, what you intend to do. It’s

dishonourable; it’s indelicate; it’s indecent. Your cousin is nothing

whatever to me, and I’m under no obligation to make concessions to him.

I’ve already made the very handsomest. Your relations with him, while he

was here, kept me on pins and needles; but I let that pass, because from

week to week I expected him to go. I’ve never liked him and he has never

liked me. That’s why you like him--because he hates me,” said Osmond

with a quick, barely audible tremor in his voice. “I’ve an ideal of what

my wife should do and should not do. She should not travel across Europe

alone, in defiance of my deepest desire, to sit at the bedside of other

men. Your cousin’s nothing to you; he’s nothing to us. You smile most

expressively when I talk about _us_, but I assure you that _we_, _we_, Mrs.

Osmond, is all I know. I take our marriage seriously; you appear to

have found a way of not doing so. I’m not aware that we’re divorced or

separated; for me we’re indissolubly united. You are nearer to me than

any human creature, and I’m nearer to you. It may be a disagreeable

proximity; it’s one, at any rate, of our own deliberate making. You

don’t like to be reminded of that, I know; but I’m perfectly willing,

because--because--” And he paused a moment, looking as if he had

something to say which would be very much to the point. “Because I think

we should accept the consequences of our actions, and what I value most

in life is the honour of a thing!”

He spoke gravely and almost gently; the accent of sarcasm had dropped

out of his tone. It had a gravity which checked his wife’s quick

emotion; the resolution with which she had entered the room found itself

caught in a mesh of fine threads. His last words were not a command,

they constituted a kind of appeal; and, though she felt that any

expression of respect on his part could only be a refinement of egotism,

they represented something transcendent and absolute, like the sign

of the cross or the flag of one’s country. He spoke in the name of

something sacred and precious--the observance of a magnificent form.

They were as perfectly apart in feeling as two disillusioned lovers

had ever been; but they had never yet separated in act. Isabel had not

changed; her old passion for justice still abode within her; and now, in

the very thick of her sense of her husband’s blasphemous sophistry, it

began to throb to a tune which for a moment promised him the victory. It

came over her that in his wish to preserve appearances he was after

all sincere, and that this, as far as it went, was a merit. Ten minutes

before she had felt all the joy of irreflective action--a joy to which

she had so long been a stranger; but action had been suddenly changed to

slow renunciation, transformed by the blight of Osmond’s touch. If she

must renounce, however, she would let him know she was a victim rather

than a dupe. “I know you’re a master of the art of mockery,” she said.

“How can you speak of an indissoluble union--how can you speak of

your being contented? Where’s our union when you accuse me of falsity?

Where’s your contentment when you have nothing but hideous suspicion in

your heart?”

“It is in our living decently together, in spite of such drawbacks.”

“We don’t live decently together!” cried Isabel.

“Indeed we don’t if you go to England.”

“That’s very little; that’s nothing. I might do much more.”

He raised his eyebrows and even his shoulders a little: he had lived

long enough in Italy to catch this trick. “Ah, if you’ve come to

threaten me I prefer my drawing.” And he walked back to his table, where

he took up the sheet of paper on which he had been working and stood

studying it.

“I suppose that if I go you’ll not expect me to come back,” said Isabel.

He turned quickly round, and she could see this movement at least was

not designed. He looked at her a little, and then, “Are you out of your

mind?” he enquired.

“How can it be anything but a rupture?” she went on; “especially if all

you say is true?” She was unable to see how it could be anything but a

rupture; she sincerely wished to know what else it might be.

He sat down before his table. “I really can’t argue with you on the

hypothesis of your defying me,” he said. And he took up one of his

little brushes again.

She lingered but a moment longer; long enough to embrace with her eye

his whole deliberately indifferent yet most expressive figure; after

which she quickly left the room. Her faculties, her energy, her passion,

were all dispersed again; she felt as if a cold, dark mist had suddenly

encompassed her. Osmond possessed in a supreme degree the art of

eliciting any weakness. On her way back to her room she found the

Countess Gemini standing in the open doorway of a little parlour in

which a small collection of heterogeneous books had been arranged.

The Countess had an open volume in her hand; she appeared to have been

glancing down a page which failed to strike her as interesting. At the

sound of Isabel’s step she raised her head.

“Ah my dear,” she said, “you, who are so literary, do tell me some

amusing book to read! Everything here’s of a dreariness--! Do you think

this would do me any good?”

Isabel glanced at the title of the volume she held out, but without

reading or understanding it. “I’m afraid I can’t advise you. I’ve had

bad news. My cousin, Ralph Touchett, is dying.”

The Countess threw down her book. “Ah, he was so simpatico. I’m awfully

sorry for you.”

“You would be sorrier still if you knew.”

“What is there to know? You look very badly,” the Countess added. “You

must have been with Osmond.”

Half an hour before Isabel would have listened very coldly to an

intimation that she should ever feel a desire for the sympathy of

her sister-in-law, and there can be no better proof of her present

embarrassment than the fact that she almost clutched at this lady’s

fluttering attention. “I’ve been with Osmond,” she said, while the

Countess’s bright eyes glittered at her.

“I’m sure then he has been odious!” the Countess cried. “Did he say he

was glad poor Mr. Touchett’s dying?”

“He said it’s impossible I should go to England.”

The Countess’s mind, when her interests were concerned, was agile; she

already foresaw the extinction of any further brightness in her visit to

Rome. Ralph Touchett would die, Isabel would go into mourning, and then

there would be no more dinner-parties. Such a prospect produced for

a moment in her countenance an expressive grimace; but this rapid,

picturesque play of feature was her only tribute to disappointment.

After all, she reflected, the game was almost played out; she had

already overstayed her invitation. And then she cared enough for

Isabel’s trouble to forget her own, and she saw that Isabel’s trouble

was deep.

It seemed deeper than the mere death of a cousin, and the Countess had

no hesitation in connecting her exasperating brother with the expression

of her sister-in-law’s eyes. Her heart beat with an almost joyous

expectation, for if she had wished to see Osmond overtopped the

conditions looked favourable now. Of course if Isabel should go to

England she herself would immediately leave Palazzo Roccanera; nothing

would induce her to remain there with Osmond. Nevertheless she felt

an immense desire to hear that Isabel would go to England. “Nothing’s

impossible for you, my dear,” she said caressingly. “Why else are you

rich and clever and good?”

“Why indeed? I feel stupidly weak.”

“Why does Osmond say it’s impossible?” the Countess asked in a tone

which sufficiently declared that she couldn’t imagine.

From the moment she thus began to question her, however, Isabel drew

back; she disengaged her hand, which the Countess had affectionately

taken. But she answered this enquiry with frank bitterness. “Because

we’re so happy together that we can’t separate even for a fortnight.”

“Ah,” cried the Countess while Isabel turned away, “when I want to make

a journey my husband simply tells me I can have no money!”

Isabel went to her room, where she walked up and down for an hour. It

may appear to some readers that she gave herself much trouble, and it is

certain that for a woman of a high spirit she had allowed herself easily

to be arrested. It seemed to her that only now she fully measured the

great undertaking of matrimony. Marriage meant that in such a case as

this, when one had to choose, one chose as a matter of course for one’s

husband. “I’m afraid--yes, I’m afraid,” she said to herself more than

once, stopping short in her walk. But what she was afraid of was not her

husband--his displeasure, his hatred, his revenge; it was not even her

own later judgement of her conduct a consideration which had often held

her in check; it was simply the violence there would be in going when

Osmond wished her to remain. A gulf of difference had opened between

them, but nevertheless it was his desire that she should stay, it was

a horror to him that she should go. She knew the nervous fineness with

which he could feel an objection. What he thought of her she knew, what

he was capable of saying to her she had felt; yet they were married, for

all that, and marriage meant that a woman should cleave to the man with

whom, uttering tremendous vows, she had stood at the altar. She sank

down on her sofa at last and buried her head in a pile of cushions.

When she raised her head again the Countess Gemini hovered before her.

She had come in all unperceived; she had a strange smile on her thin

lips and her whole face had grown in an hour a shining intimation. She

lived assuredly, it might be said, at the window of her spirit, but now

she was leaning far out. “I knocked,” she began, “but you didn’t

answer me. So I ventured in. I’ve been looking at you for the past five

minutes. You’re very unhappy.”

“Yes; but I don’t think you can comfort me.”

“Will you give me leave to try?” And the Countess sat down on the

sofa beside her. She continued to smile, and there was something

communicative and exultant in her expression. She appeared to have

a deal to say, and it occurred to Isabel for the first time that her

sister-in-law might say something really human. She made play with her

glittering eyes, in which there was an unpleasant fascination. “After

all,” she soon resumed, “I must tell you, to begin with, that I don’t

understand your state of mind. You seem to have so many scruples, so

many reasons, so many ties. When I discovered, ten years ago, that my

husband’s dearest wish was to make me miserable--of late he has simply

let me alone--ah, it was a wonderful simplification! My poor Isabel,

you’re not simple enough.”

“No, I’m not simple enough,” said Isabel.

“There’s something I want you to know,” the Countess declared--“because

I think you ought to know it. Perhaps you do; perhaps you’ve guessed it.

But if you have, all I can say is that I understand still less why you

shouldn’t do as you like.”

“What do you wish me to know?” Isabel felt a foreboding that made her

heart beat faster. The Countess was about to justify herself, and this

alone was portentous.

But she was nevertheless disposed to play a little with her subject.

“In your place I should have guessed it ages ago. Have you never really

suspected?”

“I’ve guessed nothing. What should I have suspected? I don’t know what

you mean.”

“That’s because you’ve such a beastly pure mind. I never saw a woman

with such a pure mind!” cried the Countess.

Isabel slowly got up. “You’re going to tell me something horrible.”

“You can call it by whatever name you will!” And the Countess rose

also, while her gathered perversity grew vivid and dreadful. She stood

a moment in a sort of glare of intention and, as seemed to Isabel even

then, of ugliness; after which she said: “My first sister-in-law had no

children.”

Isabel stared back at her; the announcement was an anticlimax. “Your

first sister-in-law?”

“I suppose you know at least, if one may mention it, that Osmond has

been married before! I’ve never spoken to you of his wife; I thought it

mightn’t be decent or respectful. But others, less particular, must

have done so. The poor little woman lived hardly three years and died

childless. It wasn’t till after her death that Pansy arrived.”

Isabel’s brow had contracted to a frown; her lips were parted in pale,

vague wonder. She was trying to follow; there seemed so much more to

follow than she could see. “Pansy’s not my husband’s child then?”

“Your husband’s--in perfection! But no one else’s husband’s. Some one

else’s wife’s. Ah, my good Isabel,” cried the Countess, “with you one

must dot one’s i’s!”

“I don’t understand. Whose wife’s?” Isabel asked.

“The wife of a horrid little Swiss who died--how long?--a dozen, more

than fifteen, years ago. He never recognised Miss Pansy, nor, knowing

what he was about, would have anything to say to her; and there was no

reason why he should. Osmond did, and that was better; though he had to

fit on afterwards the whole rigmarole of his own wife’s having died in

childbirth, and of his having, in grief and horror, banished the little

girl from his sight for as long as possible before taking her home from

nurse. His wife had really died, you know, of quite another matter and

in quite another place: in the Piedmontese mountains, where they had

gone, one August, because her health appeared to require the air, but

where she was suddenly taken worse--fatally ill. The story passed,

sufficiently; it was covered by the appearances so long as nobody

heeded, as nobody cared to look into it. But of course I knew--without

researches,” the Countess lucidly proceeded; “as also, you’ll

understand, without a word said between us--I mean between Osmond and

me. Don’t you see him looking at me, in silence, that way, to settle

it?--that is to settle _me_ if I should say anything. I said nothing,

right or left--never a word to a creature, if you can believe that of

me: on my honour, my dear, I speak of the thing to you now, after all

this time, as I’ve never, never spoken. It was to be enough for me,

from the first, that the child was my niece--from the moment she was

my brother’s daughter. As for her veritable mother--!” But with this

Pansy’s wonderful aunt dropped--as, involuntarily, from the impression

of her sister-in-law’s face, out of which more eyes might have seemed to

look at her than she had ever had to meet.

She had spoken no name, yet Isabel could but check, on her own lips, an

echo of the unspoken. She sank to her seat again, hanging her head.

“Why have you told me this?” she asked in a voice the Countess hardly

recognised.

“Because I’ve been so bored with your not knowing. I’ve been bored,

frankly, my dear, with not having told you; as if, stupidly, all this

time I couldn’t have managed! _Ça me depasse_, if you don’t mind my saying

so, the things, all round you, that you’ve appeared to succeed in not

knowing. It’s a sort of assistance--aid to innocent ignorance--that

I’ve always been a bad hand at rendering; and in this connexion, that

of keeping quiet for my brother, my virtue has at any rate finally

found itself exhausted. It’s not a black lie, moreover, you know,” the

Countess inimitably added. “The facts are exactly what I tell you.”

“I had no idea,” said Isabel presently; and looked up at her in a manner

that doubtless matched the apparent witlessness of this confession.

“So I believed--though it was hard to believe. Had it never occurred to

you that he was for six or seven years her lover?”

“I don’t know. Things _have_ occurred to me, and perhaps that was what

they all meant.”

“She has been wonderfully clever, she has been magnificent, about

Pansy!” the Countess, before all this view of it, cried.

“Oh, no idea, for me,” Isabel went on, “ever _definitely_ took that form.”

She appeared to be making out to herself what had been and what hadn’t.

“And as it is--I don’t understand.”

She spoke as one troubled and puzzled, yet the poor Countess seemed to

have seen her revelation fall below its possibilities of effect. She

had expected to kindle some responsive blaze, but had barely extracted a

spark. Isabel showed as scarce more impressed than she might have

been, as a young woman of approved imagination, with some fine sinister

passage of public history. “Don’t you recognise how the child could

never pass for _her_ husband’s?--that is with M. Merle himself,” her

companion resumed. “They had been separated too long for that, and he

had gone to some far country--I think to South America. If she had ever

had children--which I’m not sure of--she had lost them. The conditions

happened to make it workable, under stress (I mean at so awkward a

pinch), that Osmond should acknowledge the little girl. His wife was

dead--very true; but she had not been dead too long to put a certain

accommodation of dates out of the question--from the moment, I mean,

that suspicion wasn’t started; which was what they had to take care of.

What was more natural than that poor Mrs. Osmond, at a distance and

for a world not troubling about trifles, should have left behind her,

_poverina_, the pledge of her brief happiness that had cost her her life?

With the aid of a change of residence--Osmond had been living with her

at Naples at the time of their stay in the Alps, and he in due course

left it for ever--the whole history was successfully set going. My poor

sister-in-law, in her grave, couldn’t help herself, and the real mother,

to save _her_ skin, renounced all visible property in the child.”

“Ah, poor, poor woman!” cried Isabel, who herewith burst into tears. It

was a long time since she had shed any; she had suffered a high reaction

from weeping. But now they flowed with an abundance in which the

Countess Gemini found only another discomfiture.

“It’s very kind of you to pity her!” she discordantly laughed. “Yes

indeed, you have a way of your own--!”

“He must have been false to his wife--and so very soon!” said Isabel

with a sudden check.

“That’s all that’s wanting--that you should take up her cause!” the

Countess went on. “I quite agree with you, however, that it was much too

soon.”

“But to me, to me--?” And Isabel hesitated as if she had not heard; as

if her question--though it was sufficiently there in her eyes--were all

for herself.

“To you he has been faithful? Well, it depends, my dear, on what you

call faithful. When he married you he was no longer the lover of another

woman--_such_ a lover as he had been, _cara mia_, between their risks and

their precautions, while the thing lasted! That state of affairs had

passed away; the lady had repented, or at all events, for reasons of her

own, drawn back: she had always had, too, a worship of appearances

so intense that even Osmond himself had got bored with it. You may

therefore imagine what it was--when he couldn’t patch it on conveniently

to _any_ of those he goes in for! But the whole past was between them.”

“Yes,” Isabel mechanically echoed, “the whole past is between them.”

“Ah, this later past is nothing. But for six or seven years, as I say,

they had kept it up.”

She was silent a little. “Why then did she want him to marry me?”

“Ah my dear, that’s her superiority! Because you had money; and because

she believed you would be good to Pansy.”

“Poor woman--and Pansy who doesn’t like her!” cried Isabel.

“That’s the reason she wanted some one whom Pansy would like. She knows

it; she knows everything.”

“Will she know that you’ve told me this?”

“That will depend upon whether you tell her. She’s prepared for it, and

do you know what she counts upon for her defence? On your believing that

I lie. Perhaps you do; don’t make yourself uncomfortable to hide it.

Only, as it happens this time, I don’t. I’ve told plenty of little

idiotic fibs, but they’ve never hurt any one but myself.”

Isabel sat staring at her companion’s story as at a bale of fantastic

wares some strolling gypsy might have unpacked on the carpet at her

feet. “Why did Osmond never marry her?” she finally asked.

“Because she had no money.” The Countess had an answer for everything,

and if she lied she lied well. “No one knows, no one has ever known,

what she lives on, or how she has got all those beautiful things. I

don’t believe Osmond himself knows. Besides, she wouldn’t have married

him.”

“How can she have loved him then?”

“She doesn’t love him in that way. She did at first, and then, I

suppose, she would have married him; but at that time her husband was

living. By the time M. Merle had rejoined--I won’t say his ancestors,

because he never had any--her relations with Osmond had changed, and she

had grown more ambitious. Besides, she has never had, about him,”

the Countess went on, leaving Isabel to wince for it so tragically

afterwards--“she _had_ never had, what you might call any illusions of

_intelligence_. She hoped she might marry a great man; that has always

been her idea. She has waited and watched and plotted and prayed; but

she has never succeeded. I don’t call Madame Merle a success, you know.

I don’t know what she may accomplish yet, but at present she has very

little to show. The only tangible result she has ever achieved--except,

of course, getting to know every one and staying with them free of

expense--has been her bringing you and Osmond together. Oh, she did

that, my dear; you needn’t look as if you doubted it. I’ve watched

them for years; I know everything--everything. I’m thought a great

scatterbrain, but I’ve had enough application of mind to follow up those

two. She hates me, and her way of showing it is to pretend to be for

ever defending me. When people say I’ve had fifteen lovers she looks

horrified and declares that quite half of them were never proved. She

has been afraid of me for years, and she has taken great comfort in the

vile, false things people have said about me. She has been afraid I’d

expose her, and she threatened me one day when Osmond began to pay his

court to you. It was at his house in Florence; do you remember that

afternoon when she brought you there and we had tea in the garden? She

let me know then that if I should tell tales two could play at that

game. She pretends there’s a good deal more to tell about me than about

her. It would be an interesting comparison! I don’t care a fig what she

may say, simply because I know _you_ don’t care a fig. You can’t trouble

your head about me less than you do already. So she may take her revenge

as she chooses; I don’t think she’ll frighten you very much. Her great

idea has been to be tremendously irreproachable--a kind of full-blown

lily--the incarnation of propriety. She has always worshipped that god.

There should be no scandal about Caesar’s wife, you know; and, as I say,

she has always hoped to marry Caesar. That was one reason she wouldn’t

marry Osmond; the fear that on seeing her with Pansy people would put

things together--would even see a resemblance. She has had a terror

lest the mother should betray herself. She has been awfully careful; the

mother has never done so.”

“Yes, yes, the mother has done so,” said Isabel, who had listened to

all this with a face more and more wan. “She betrayed herself to me the

other day, though I didn’t recognise her. There appeared to have been a

chance of Pansy’s making a great marriage, and in her disappointment at

its not coming off she almost dropped the mask.”

“Ah, that’s where she’d dish herself!” cried the Countess. “She has

failed so dreadfully that she’s determined her daughter shall make it

up.”

Isabel started at the words “her daughter,” which her guest threw off

so familiarly. “It seems very wonderful,” she murmured; and in this

bewildering impression she had almost lost her sense of being personally

touched by the story.

“Now don’t go and turn against the poor innocent child!” the Countess

went on. “She’s very nice, in spite of her deplorable origin. I myself

have liked Pansy; not, naturally, because she was hers, but because she

had become yours.”

“Yes, she has become mine. And how the poor woman must have suffered at

seeing me--!” Isabel exclaimed while she flushed at the thought.

“I don’t believe she has suffered; on the contrary, she has enjoyed.

Osmond’s marriage has given his daughter a great little lift. Before

that she lived in a hole. And do you know what the mother thought? That

you might take such a fancy to the child that you’d do something for

her. Osmond of course could never give her a portion. Osmond was really

extremely poor; but of course you know all about that. Ah, my dear,”

cried the Countess, “why did you ever inherit money?” She stopped a

moment as if she saw something singular in Isabel’s face. “Don’t tell

me now that you’ll give her a dot. You’re capable of that, but I would

refuse to believe it. Don’t try to be too good. Be a little easy and

natural and nasty; feel a little wicked, for the comfort of it, once in

your life!”

“It’s very strange. I suppose I ought to know, but I’m sorry,” Isabel

said. “I’m much obliged to you.”

“Yes, you seem to be!” cried the Countess with a mocking laugh.

“Perhaps you are--perhaps you’re not. You don’t take it as I should have

thought.”

“How should I take it?” Isabel asked.

“Well, I should say as a woman who has been made use of.” Isabel made

no answer to this; she only listened, and the Countess went on. “They’ve

always been bound to each other; they remained so even after she broke

off--or _he_ did. But he has always been more for her than she has been

for him. When their little carnival was over they made a bargain that

each should give the other complete liberty, but that each should also

do everything possible to help the other on. You may ask me how I know

such a thing as that. I know it by the way they’ve behaved. Now see how

much better women are than men! She has found a wife for Osmond, but

Osmond has never lifted a little finger for _her_. She has worked for him,

plotted for him, suffered for him; she has even more than once found

money for him; and the end of it is that he’s tired of her. She’s an old

habit; there are moments when he needs her, but on the whole he wouldn’t

miss her if she were removed. And, what’s more, to-day she knows it. So

you needn’t be jealous!” the Countess added humorously.

Isabel rose from her sofa again; she felt bruised and scant of breath;

her head was humming with new knowledge. “I’m much obliged to you,” she

repeated. And then she added abruptly, in quite a different tone: “How

do you know all this?”

This enquiry appeared to ruffle the Countess more than Isabel’s

expression of gratitude pleased her. She gave her companion a bold

stare, with which, “Let us assume that I’ve invented it!” she cried. She

too, however, suddenly changed her tone and, laying her hand on Isabel’s

arm, said with the penetration of her sharp bright smile: “Now will you

give up your journey?”

Isabel started a little; she turned away. But she felt weak and in a

moment had to lay her arm upon the mantel-shelf for support. She stood a

minute so, and then upon her arm she dropped her dizzy head, with closed

eyes and pale lips.

“I’ve done wrong to speak--I’ve made you ill!” the Countess cried.

“Ah, I must see Ralph!” Isabel wailed; not in resentment, not in

the quick passion her companion had looked for; but in a tone of

far-reaching, infinite sadness.