putation for saying risky things in blundering French
whereof the principal humour lay in the uncertainty as to whether she
knew their meaning or not.

Nevertheless she was the only good-hearted woman in the house, and I
really believe she thought she was doing a kind act in keeping me
company. But oh, how I suffered from her long accounts of her former
"visits" to my house, whereby I learned, without wishing to, what her
origin had been (the daughter of a London postman); what position she
had held in Castle Raa in her winsome and reckless youth (one that need
not be defined); how she had met her husband in New York and he had
married her to save the reputation of his child; and finally how the
American ladies of society had refused to receive her, and she had vowed
to be revenged on them by marrying Alma to the highest title in Europe
that could be bought with money.

"I was just like your father, my dear. I never did no manner of harm to
those people. They used to think I thought myself better blood nor they
were, but I never thought no such thing, I assure you. Only when they
turned nasty after my marriage I made up my mind--just as your father
did--as Alma should marry a bigger husband nor any of them, even if he
wasn't worth a dime and 'adn't a 'air on 'is 'ead."

But even these revelations about herself were less humiliating than her
sympathy with me, which implied that I was not fitted to be mistress of
a noble house--how could it be expected of me?--whereas Alma was just as
if she had been born to it, and therefore it was lucky for me that I had
her there to show me how to do things.

"Alma's gotten such _ton!_ Such distangy manners!" she would say.

The effect of all this was to make me feel, as I had never felt before,
the intolerable nature of the yoke I was living under. When I looked
into the future and saw nothing before me but years of this ignoble
bondage, I told myself that nothing--no sacrament or contract, no law of
church or state--could make me endure it.

From day to day my maid came to me with insidious hints about Alma and
my husband. I found myself listening to them. I also found myself
refreshing my memory of the hideous scene in Paris, and wondering why I
had condoned the offence by staying an hour longer under my husband's
protection.

And then there was always another force at work within me--my own secret
passion. Though sometimes I felt myself to be a wretched sinner and
thought t