inning of the affair!

Why had it not been her lot to go to Prague? Would not she have drunk
up Esil, or swallowed a crocodile against any she-Laertes that would
have thought to rival and to parallel her great love? Would not
she have piled up new Ossas, had the opportunity been given her?
Womanlike she had gone to him in her trouble,--had burst through his
prison doors, had thrown herself on his breast, and had wept at his
feet. But of what avail had been that? This strange female, this
Moabitish woman, had gone to Prague, and had found a key,--and
everybody said that the thing was done! How she hated the strange
woman, and remembered all the evil things that had been said of the
intruder! She told herself over and over again that had it been
any one else than this half-foreigner, this German Jewess, this
intriguing unfeminine upstart, she could have borne it. Did not all
the world know that the woman for the last two years had been the
mistress of that old doting Duke who was now dead? Had one ever heard
who was her father or who was her mother? Had it not always been
declared of her that she was a pushing, dangerous, scheming creature?
And then she was old enough to be his mother, though by some Medean
tricks known to such women, she was able to postpone,--not the
ravages of age,--but the manifestation of them to the eyes of the
world. In all of which charges poor Lady Laura wronged her rival
foully;--in that matter of age especially, for, as it happened,
Madame Goesler was by some months the younger of the two. But Lady
Laura was a blonde, and trouble had told upon her outwardly, as it is
wont to do upon those who are fair-skinned, and, at the same time,
high-hearted. But Madame Goesler was a brunette,--swarthy, Lady Laura
would have called her,--with bright eyes and glossy hair and thin
cheeks, and now being somewhat over thirty she was at her best. Lady
Laura hated her as a fair woman who has lost her beauty can hate the
dark woman who keeps it.

"What made her think of the key?" said Lady Chiltern.

"I don't believe she did think of it. It was an accident."

"Then why did she go?"

"Oh, Violet, do not talk to me about that woman any more, or I shall
be mad."

"She has done him good service."

"Very well;--so be it. Let him have the service. I know they would
have acquitted him if she had never stirred from London. Oswald says
so. But no matter. Let her have her triumph. Only do not talk to me
about her.