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.
