CHAPTER LI
The Countess was not banished, but she felt the insecurity of her tenureof her brother's hospitality. A week after this incident Isabel receiveda telegram from England, dated from Gardencourt and bearing the stamp ofMrs. Touchett's authorship. "Ralph cannot last many days," it ran, "andif convenient would like to see you. Wishes me to say that you must comeonly if you've not other duties. Say, for myself, that you used to talka good deal about your duty and to wonder what it was; shall be curiousto see whether you've found it out. Ralph is really dying, and there'sno other company." Isabel was prepared for this news, having receivedfrom Henrietta Stackpole a detailed account of her journey to Englandwith her appreciative patient. Ralph had arrived more dead than alive,but she had managed to convey him to Gardencourt, where he had taken tohis bed, which, as Miss Stackpole wrote, he evidently would never leaveagain. She added that she had really had two patients on her handsinstead of one, inasmuch as Mr. Goodwood, who had been of no earthlyuse, was quite as ailing, in a different way, as Mr. Touchett.Afterwards she wrote that she had been obliged to surrender the field toMrs. Touchett, who had just returned from America and had promptly givenher to understand that she didn't wish any interviewing at Gardencourt.Isabel had written to her aunt shortly after Ralph came to Rome, lettingher know of his critical condition and suggesting that she shouldlose no time in returning to Europe. Mrs. Touchett had telegraphed anacknowledgement of this admonition, and the only further news Isabelreceived from her was the second telegram I have just quoted.
Isabel stood a moment looking at the latter missive; then, thrusting itinto 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 andwent in. Osmond was seated at the table near the window with a foliovolume before him, propped against a pile of books. This volume was openat a page of small coloured plates, and Isabel presently saw that hehad been copying from it the drawing of an antique coin. A box ofwater-colours and fine brushes lay before him, and he had alreadytransferred to a sheet of immaculate paper the delicate, finely-tinteddisk. His back was turned toward the door, but he recognised his wifewithout looking round.
"Excuse me for disturbing you," she said.
"When I come to your room I always knock," he answered, going on withhis 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 througha magnifying glass. "He was dying when we married; he'll outlive usall."
Isabel gave herself no time, no thought, to appreciate the carefulcynicism of this declaration she simply went on quickly, full ofher own intention "My aunt has telegraphed for me; I must go toGardencourt."
"Why must you go to Gardencourt?" Osmond asked in the tone of impartialcuriosity.
"To see Ralph before he dies."
To this, for some time, he made no rejoinder; he continued to give hischief attention to his work, which was of a sort that would brook nonegligence. "I don't see the need of it," he said at last. "He came tosee you here. I didn't like that; I thought his being in Rome a greatmistake. But I tolerated it because it was to be the last time youshould 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 dustfrom his drawing, slowly got up, and for the first time looked at hiswife. "For my not having interfered while he was here."
"Oh yes, I am. I remember perfectly how distinctly you let me know youdidn'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 littledrawing. "I must go to England," she said, with a full consciousnessthat her tone might strike an irritable man of taste as stupidlyobstinate.
"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 nothingI do or don't do. You pretend to think I lie."
Osmond turned slightly pale; he gave a cold smile. "That's why you mustgo 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 wouldcommit 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 ofmildness.
"Let it be clear. If you leave Rome to-day it will be a piece of themost deliberate, the most calculated, opposition."
"How can you call it calculated? I received my aunt's telegram but threeminutes ago."
"You calculate rapidly; it's a great accomplishment. I don't see why weshould prolong our discussion you know my wish." And he stood there asif he expected to see her withdraw.
But she never moved; she couldn't move, strange as it may seem; shestill wished to justify herself; he had the power, in an extraordinarydegree, of making her feel this need. There was something in herimagination he could always appeal to against her judgement. "You've noreason 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'syour own opposition that's calculated. It's malignant."
She had never uttered her worst thought to her husband before, and thesensation of hearing it was evidently new to Osmond. But he showed nosurprise, and his coolness was apparently a proof that he had believedhis wife would in fact be unable to resist for ever his ingeniousendeavour to draw her out. "It's all the more intense then," heanswered. And he added almost as if he were giving her a friendlycounsel: "This is a very important matter." She recognised that; shewas fully conscious of the weight of the occasion she knew that betweenthem they had arrived at a crisis. Its gravity made her careful; shesaid nothing, and he went on. "You say I've no reason? I have the verybest. I dislike, from the bottom of my soul, what you intend to do. It'sdishonourable; it's indelicate; it's indecent. Your cousin is nothingwhatever 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 hewas here, kept me on pins and needles; but I let that pass, because fromweek to week I expected him to go. I've never liked him and he has neverliked me. That's why you like him--because he hates me," said Osmondwith a quick, barely audible tremor in his voice. "I've an ideal of whatmy wife should do and should not do. She should not travel across Europealone, in defiance of my deepest desire, to sit at the bedside of othermen. Your cousin's nothing to you; he's nothing to us. You smile mostexpressively 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 tohave found a way of not doing so. I'm not aware that we're divorced orseparated; for me we're indissolubly united. You are nearer to me thanany human creature, and I'm nearer to you. It may be a disagreeableproximity; it's one, at any rate, of our own deliberate making. Youdon'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 hadsomething to say which would be very much to the point. "Because I thinkwe should accept the consequences of our actions, and what I value mostin life is the honour of a thing!"
He spoke gravely and almost gently; the accent of sarcasm had droppedout of his tone. It had a gravity which checked his wife's quickemotion the resolution with which she had entered the room found itselfcaught in a mesh of fine threads. His last words were not a command,they constituted a kind of appeal; and, though she felt that anyexpression of respect on his part could only be a refinement of egotism,they represented something transcendent and absolute, like the signof the cross or the flag of one's country. He spoke in the name ofsomething sacred and precious--the observance of a magnificent form.They were as perfectly apart in feeling as two disillusioned lovershad ever been; but they had never yet sep
arated in act. Isabel had notchanged; her old passion for justice still abode within her; and now, inthe very thick of her sense of her husband's blasphemous sophistry, itbegan to throb to a tune which for a moment promised him the victory. Itcame over her that in his wish to preserve appearances he was afterall sincere, and that this, as far as it went, was a merit. Ten minutesbefore she had felt all the joy of irreflective action--a joy to whichshe had so long been a stranger; but action had been suddenly changed toslow renunciation, transformed by the blight of Osmond's touch. If shemust renounce, however, she would let him know she was a victim ratherthan 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 ofyour being contented? Where's our union when you accuse me of falsity?Where's your contentment when you have nothing but hideous suspicion inyour 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 livedlong enough in Italy to catch this trick. "Ah, if you've come tothreaten me I prefer my drawing." And he walked back to his table, wherehe took up the sheet of paper on which he had been working and stoodstudying 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 wasnot designed. He looked at her a little, and then, "Are you out of yourmind?" he enquired.
"How can it be anything but a rupture?" she went on "especially if allyou say is true?" She was unable to see how it could be anything but arupture; she sincerely wished to know what else it might be.
He sat down before his table. "I really can't argue with you on thehypothesis of your defying me," he said. And he took up one of hislittle brushes again.
She lingered but a moment longer; long enough to embrace with her eyehis whole deliberately indifferent yet most expressive figure; afterwhich she quickly left the room. Her faculties, her energy, her passion,were all dispersed again; she felt as if a cold, dark mist had suddenlyencompassed her. Osmond possessed in a supreme degree the art ofeliciting any weakness. On her way back to her room she found theCountess Gemini standing in the open doorway of a little parlour inwhich a small collection of heterogeneous books had been arranged.The Countess had an open volume in her hand; she appeared to have beenglancing down a page which failed to strike her as interesting. At thesound of Isabel's step she raised her head.
"Ah my dear," she said, "you, who are so literary, do tell me someamusing book to read! Everything here's of a dreariness--! Do you thinkthis would do me any good?"
Isabel glanced at the title of the volume she held out, but withoutreading or understanding it. "I'm afraid I can't advise you. I've hadbad news. My cousin, Ralph Touchett, is dying."
The Countess threw down her book. "Ah, he was so simpatico. I'm awfullysorry for you."
"You would be sorrier still if you knew."
"What is there to know? You look very badly," the Countess added. "Youmust have been with Osmond."
Half an hour before Isabel would have listened very coldly to anintimation that she should ever feel a desire for the sympathy ofher sister-in-law, and there can be no better proof of her presentembarrassment than the fact that she almost clutched at this lady'sfluttering attention. "I've been with Osmond," she said, while theCountess's bright eyes glittered at her.
"I'm sure then he has been odious!" the Countess cried. "Did he say hewas 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; shealready foresaw the extinction of any further brightness in her visit toRome. Ralph Touchett would die, Isabel would go into mourning, and thenthere would be no more dinner-parties. Such a prospect produced fora 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 hadalready overstayed her invitation. And then she cared enough forIsabel's trouble to forget her own, and she saw that Isabel's troublewas deep.
It seemed deeper than the mere death of a cousin, and the Countess hadno hesitation in connecting her exasperating brother with the expressionof her sister-in-law's eyes. Her heart beat with an almost joyousexpectation, for if she had wished to see Osmond overtopped theconditions looked favourable now. Of course if Isabel should go toEngland she herself would immediately leave Palazzo Roccanera; nothingwould induce her to remain there with Osmond. Nevertheless she feltan immense desire to hear that Isabel would go to England. "Nothing'simpossible for you, my dear," she said caressingly. "Why else are yourich and clever and good?"
"Why indeed? I feel stupidly weak."
"Why does Osmond say it's impossible?" the Countess asked in a tonewhich sufficiently declared that she couldn't imagine.
From the moment she thus began to question her, however, Isabel drewback; she disengaged her hand, which the Countess had affectionatelytaken. But she answered this enquiry with frank bitterness. "Becausewe'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 makea 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. Itmay appear to some readers that she gave herself much trouble, and it iscertain that for a woman of a high spirit she had allowed herself easilyto be arrested. It seemed to her that only now she fully measured thegreat undertaking of matrimony. Marriage meant that in such a case asthis, when one had to choose, one chose as a matter of course for one'shusband. "I'm afraid--yes, I'm afraid," she said to herself more thanonce, stopping short in her walk. But what she was afraid of was not herhusband--his displeasure, his hatred, his revenge; it was not even herown later judgement of her conduct a consideration which had often heldher in check; it was simply the violence there would be in going whenOsmond wished her to remain. A gulf of difference had opened betweenthem, but nevertheless it was his desire that she should stay, it wasa horror to him that she should go. She knew the nervous fineness withwhich he could feel an objection. What he thought of her she knew, whathe was capable of saying to her she had felt; yet they were married, forall that, and marriage meant that a woman should cleave to the man withwhom, uttering tremendous vows, she had stood at the altar. She sankdown 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 thinlips and her whole face had grown in an hour a shining intimation. Shelived assuredly, it might be said, at the window of her spirit, but nowshe was leaning far out. "I knocked," she began, "but you didn'tanswer me. So I ventured in. I've been looking at you for the past fiveminutes. 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 thesofa beside her. She continued to smile, and there was somethingcommunicative and exultant in her expression. She appeared to havea deal to say, and it occurred to Isabel for the first time that hersister-in-law might say something really human. She made play with herglittering eyes, in which there was an unpleasant fascination. "Afterall," she soon resumed, "I must tell you, to begin with, that I don'tunderstand your state of mind. You seem to have so many scruples, somany reasons, so many ties. When I discovered, ten years ago, that myhusband's dearest wish was to make me miserable--of late he has simplylet 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--"becauseI 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 youshouldn't do as you like."
"What do you wish me to know?" Isabel felt a foreboding that made herheart beat faster. The Countess was about to justify herself, and thisalone 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 reallysuspected?"
"I've guessed nothing. What should I have suspected? I don't know whatyou mean."
"That's because you've such a beastly pure mind. I never saw a womanwith 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 rosealso, while her gathered perversity grew vivid and dreadful. She stooda moment in a sort of glare of intention and, as seemed to Isabel eventhen, of ugliness; after which she said: "My first sister-in-law had nochildren."
Isabel stared back at her; the announcement was an anticlimax. "Yourfirst sister-in-law?"
"I suppose you know at least, if one may mention it, that Osmond hasbeen married before! I've never spoken to you of his wife; I thought itmightn't be decent or respectful. But others, less particular, musthave done so. The poor little woman lived hardly three years and diedchildless. 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 tofollow 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 oneelse's wife's. Ah, my good Isabel," cried the Countess, "with you onemust 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, morethan fifteen, years ago. He never recognised Miss Pansy, nor, knowingwhat he was about, would have anything to say to her; and there was noreason why he should. Osmond did, and that was better; though he had tofit on afterwards the whole rigmarole of his own wife's having died inchildbirth, and of his having, in grief and horror, banished the littlegirl from his sight for as long as possible before taking her home fromnurse. His wife had really died, you know, of quite another matter andin quite another place: in the Piedmontese mountains, where they hadgone, one August, because her health appeared to require the air, butwhere she was suddenly taken worse--fatally ill. The story passed,sufficiently; it was covered by the appearances so long as nobodyheeded, as nobody cared to look into it. But of course I knew--withoutresearches," the Countess lucidly proceeded; "as also, you'llunderstand, without a word said between us--I mean between Osmond andme. Don't you see him looking at me, in silence, that way, to settleit?--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 ofme: on my honour, my dear, I speak of the thing to you now, after allthis 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 wasmy brother's daughter. As for her veritable mother--!" But with thisPansy's wonderful aunt dropped--as, involuntarily, from the impressionof her sister-in-law's face, out of which more eyes might have seemed tolook at her than she had ever had to meet.
She had spoken no name, yet Isabel could but check, on her own lips, anecho 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 hardlyrecognised.
"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 thistime I couldn't have managed! Ca me depasse, if you don't mind my sayingso, the things, all round you, that you've appeared to succeed in notknowing. It's a sort of assistance--aid to innocent ignorance--thatI've always been a bad hand at rendering; and in this connexion, thatof keeping quiet for my brother, my virtue has at any rate finallyfound itself exhausted. It's not a black lie, moreover, you know," theCountess inimitably added. "The facts are exactly what I tell you."
"I had no idea," said Isabel presently; and looked up at her in a mannerthat doubtless matched the apparent witlessness of this confession.
"So I believed--though it was hard to believe. Had it never occurred toyou that he was for six or seven years her lover?"
"I don't know. Things HAVE occurred to me, and perhaps that was whatthey all meant."
"She has been wonderfully clever, she has been magnificent, aboutPansy!" 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 tohave seen her revelation fall below its possibilities of effect. Shehad expected to kindle some responsive blaze, but had barely extracted aspark. Isabel showed as scarce more impressed than she might havebeen, as a young woman of approved imagination, with some fine sinisterpassage of public history. "Don't you recognise how the child couldnever pass for HER husband's?--that is with M. Merle himself," hercompanion resumed. "They had been separated too long for that, and hehad gone to some far country--I think to South America. If she had everhad children--which I'm not sure of--she had lost them. The conditionshappened to make it workable, under stress (I mean at so awkward apinch), that Osmond should acknowledge the little girl. His wife wasdead--very true; but she had not been dead too long to put a certainaccommodation 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 andfor 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 herat Naples at the time of their stay in the Alps, and he in due courseleft it for ever--the whole history was successfully set going. My poorsister-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. Itwas a long time since she had shed any; she had suffered a high reactionfrom weeping. But now they flowed with an abundance in which theCountess Gemini found only another discomfiture.
"It's very kind of you to pity her!" she discordantly laughed. "Yesindeed, you have a way of your own--!"
"He must have been false to his wife--and so very soon!" said Isabelwith a sudden check.
"That's all that's wanting--that you should take up her cause!" theCountess went on. "I quite agree with you, however, that it was much toosoon."
"But to me, to me--?" And Isabel hesitated as if she had not heard; asif her question--though it was sufficiently there in her eyes--were allfor herself.
"To you he has been faithful? Well, it depends, my dear, on what youcall faithful. When he married you he was no longer the lover of anotherwoman--SUCH a lover as he had been, cara mia, between their risks andtheir precautions, while the thing lasted! That state of affairs hadpassed away; the lady had repented, or at all events, for reasons of herown, drawn back: she had always had, too, a worship of appearancesso intense that even Osmond himself had got bored with it. You maytherefore imagine what it was--when he couldn't patch it on convenientlyto 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 becauseshe believed you would be good to Pansy."
"Poor woman--and Pansy who doesn't like her!" cried Isabel.
"That's the reason s
he wanted some one whom Pansy would like. She knowsit; 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, anddo you know what she counts upon for her defence? On your believing thatI 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 littleidiotic fibs, but they've never hurt any one but myself."
Isabel sat staring at her companion's story as at a bale of fantasticwares some strolling gypsy might have unpacked on the carpet at herfeet. "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. Idon't believe Osmond himself knows. Besides, she wouldn't have marriedhim."
"How can she have loved him then?"
"She doesn't love him in that way. She did at first, and then, Isuppose, she would have married him; but at that time her husband wasliving. 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 shehad grown more ambitious. Besides, she has never had, about him,"the Countess went on, leaving Isabel to wince for it so tragicallyafterwards--"she HAD never had, what you might call any illusions ofINTELLIGENCE. She hoped she might marry a great man; that has alwaysbeen her idea. She has waited and watched and plotted and prayed; butshe 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 verylittle to show. The only tangible result she has ever achieved--except,of course, getting to know every one and staying with them free ofexpense--has been her bringing you and Osmond together. Oh, she didthat, my dear; you needn't look as if you doubted it. I've watchedthem for years; I know everything--everything. I'm thought a greatscatterbrain, but I've had enough application of mind to follow up thosetwo. She hates me, and her way of showing it is to pretend to be forever defending me. When people say I've had fifteen lovers she lookshorrified and declares that quite half of them were never proved. Shehas been afraid of me for years, and she has taken great comfort in thevile, false things people have said about me. She has been afraid I'dexpose her, and she threatened me one day when Osmond began to pay hiscourt to you. It was at his house in Florence; do you remember thatafternoon when she brought you there and we had tea in the garden? Shelet me know then that if I should tell tales two could play at thatgame. She pretends there's a good deal more to tell about me than abouther. It would be an interesting comparison! I don't care a fig what shemay say, simply because I know YOU don't care a fig. You can't troubleyour head about me less than you do already. So she may take her revengeas she chooses; I don't think she'll frighten you very much. Her greatidea has been to be tremendously irreproachable--a kind of full-blownlily--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'tmarry Osmond; the fear that on seeing her with Pansy people would putthings together--would even see a resemblance. She has had a terrorlest the mother should betray herself. She has been awfully careful; themother has never done so."
"Yes, yes, the mother has done so," said Isabel, who had listened toall this with a face more and more wan. "She betrayed herself to me theother day, though I didn't recognise her. There appeared to have been achance of Pansy's making a great marriage, and in her disappointment atits not coming off she almost dropped the mask."
"Ah, that's where she'd dish herself!" cried the Countess. "She hasfailed so dreadfully that she's determined her daughter shall make itup."
Isabel started at the words "her daughter," which her guest threw offso familiarly. "It seems very wonderful," she murmured; and in thisbewildering impression she had almost lost her sense of being personallytouched by the story.
"Now don't go and turn against the poor innocent child!" the Countesswent on. "She's very nice, in spite of her deplorable origin. I myselfhave liked Pansy; not, naturally, because she was hers, but because shehad become yours."
"Yes, she has become mine. And how the poor woman must have suffered atseeing 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. Beforethat she lived in a hole. And do you know what the mother thought? Thatyou might take such a fancy to the child that you'd do something forher. Osmond of course could never give her a portion. Osmond was reallyextremely poor; but of course you know all about that. Ah, my dear,"cried the Countess, "why did you ever inherit money?" She stopped amoment as if she saw something singular in Isabel's face. "Don't tellme now that you'll give her a dot. You're capable of that, but I wouldrefuse to believe it. Don't try to be too good. Be a little easy andnatural and nasty; feel a little wicked, for the comfort of it, once inyour life!"
"It's very strange. I suppose I ought to know, but I'm sorry," Isabelsaid. "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 havethought."
"How should I take it?" Isabel asked.
"Well, I should say as a woman who has been made use of." Isabel madeno answer to this; she only listened, and the Countess went on. "They'vealways been bound to each other; they remained so even after she brokeoff--or HE did. But he has always been more for her than she has beenfor him. When their little carnival was over they made a bargain thateach should give the other complete liberty, but that each should alsodo everything possible to help the other on. You may ask me how I knowsuch a thing as that. I know it by the way they've behaved. Now see howmuch better women are than men! She has found a wife for Osmond, butOsmond 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 foundmoney for him; and the end of it is that he's tired of her. She's an oldhabit; there are moments when he needs her, but on the whole he wouldn'tmiss her if she were removed. And, what's more, today she knows it. Soyou 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," sherepeated. And then she added abruptly, in quite a different tone: "Howdo you know all this?"
This enquiry appeared to ruffle the Countess more than Isabel'sexpression of gratitude pleased her. She gave her companion a boldstare, with which, "Let us assume that I've invented it!" she cried. Shetoo, however, suddenly changed her tone and, laying her hand on Isabel'sarm, said with the penetration of her sharp bright smile: "Now will yougive up your journey?"
Isabel started a little; she turned away. But she felt weak and in amoment had to lay her arm upon the mantel-shelf for support. She stood aminute so, and then upon her arm she dropped her dizzy head, with closedeyes 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 inthe quick passion her companion had looked for; but in a tone offar-reaching, infinite sadness.