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poor Mrs. Osmond, at a distance and for a world not trou-
bling about trifles, should have left behind her, poverina, the
pledge of her brief happiness that had cost 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, how-
ever, 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;

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