Page 179 - swanns-way

baldness of her brows. Françoise must often, from the next
room, have heard these mordant sarcasms levelled at her-
self, the mere framing of which in words would not have
relieved my aunt’s feelings sufficiently, had they been al-
lowed to remain in a purely immaterial form, without the
degree of substance and reality which she added to them
by murmuring them half-aloud. Sometimes, however, even
these counterpane dramas would not satisfy my aunt; she
must see her work staged. And so, on a Sunday, with all the
doors mysteriously closed, she would confide in Eulalie her
doubts of Françoise’s integrity and her determination to be
rid of her, and on another day she would confide in Fran-
çoise her suspicions of the disloyalty of Eulalie, to whom
the front-door would very soon be closed for good. A few
days more, and, disgusted with her latest confidant, she
would again be ‘as thick as thieves’ with the traitor, while,
before the next performance, the two would once more
have changed their parts. But the suspicions which Eulalie
might occasionally breed in her were no more than a fire of
straw, which must soon subside for lack of fuel, since Eulalie
was not living with her in the house. It was a very different
matter when the suspect was Françoise, of whose presence
under the same roof as herself my aunt was perpetually
conscious, while for fear of catching cold, were she to leave
her bed, she would never dare go downstairs to the kitchen
to see for herself whether there was, indeed, any foundation
for her suspicions. And so on by degrees, until her mind
had no other occupation than to attempt, at every hour of
the day, to discover what was being done, what was being

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