"After all," she soon resumed, "I must tell you, to begin with, that Idon'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 Iunderstand 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 recognized 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 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 recognized.
"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! Ca 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.
