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 f