e 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 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 irreproachable--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 betrayed herself to me the
other day, though I didn't recognise her. There appeared to have been a
chance of Pansy's making a great marriage, and in her disappointment at
its not coming off she almost dropped the mask."

"Ah, that's where she'd dish herself!" cried the Countess. "She has
failed so dreadfully that she's determined her daughter shall make it
up."

Isabel started at the words "her daughter," which her guest threw off
so familiarly. "It seems very wonderful," she murmured; and in this
bewildering impression she had almost lost her sense of being personally
touched by the story.

"Now don't go and turn against the poor innocent child!" the Countess
went on. "She's very nice, in spite of her deplorable origin. I myself
have liked Pansy; not, naturally, because she was hers, but because she
had become yours."

"Yes, she has become mine. And how the poor woman must have suffered at
seeing me--!" Isabel exclaimed while she flushed at the thought.

"I don't believe she has suffe