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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 about 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 irreproach-
able-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 be-
trayed herself to me the other day, though I didn’t recognize
her. There appeared to have been a chance of Pansy’s mak-
ing a great marriage, and in her disappointment at its not

772 The Portrait of a Lady