out money, without experience, with no
wishes."

"No wishes, Madama! Did you not wish to go out into the beautiful bright
world, to see people, to hear music, to talk, to please? It is
impossible. Money, that is different, and experience that is different:
but to wish, every one must do that."

"Bice, you have a great deal of experience for so young a girl. You have
seen so much. I ought to have brought you up otherwise, perhaps, but how
could I? You have always shared with me, and what I had I gave you. And
you know besides how little satisfaction there is in it--how sick one
becomes of a crowd of faces that are nothing to you, and of music that
goes on just the same whatever you are feeling--and this to please, as
you call it! Whom do I please? Persons who do not care at all for me
except that I amuse them sometimes--who like me to sing; who like to
look at me; who find themselves less dull when I am there. That is all.
And that will be all for you, unless you marry well, my Bice, which it
is the object of my life to make you do."

"I hope I shall marry well," said the girl, composedly. "It would be
very pleasant to find one's self above all shifts, Madama. Still that is
not everything; and I would much rather have led the life I have led,
and enjoyed myself and seen so much, than to have been the little
governess of the English family--the little girl who is always so quiet,
who walks out with the children, and will not accept the eldest son even
when he makes love to her. I should have laughed at the eldest son. I
know what they are like--they are so stupid; they have not a word to
say; that would have amused me; but in the Tauchnitz books it is all
honour and wretchedness. I am glad I know the world, and have seen all
kinds of people, and wish for everything that is pleasant, instead of
being so good and having no wishes as you say."

The Contessa laughed, having got rid of all her incipient tears. "There
is more life in it," she said. "You see now what it is--this life in
England; one day is like another, one does the same things. The
newspaper comes in the morning, then luncheon, then to go out, then tea,
dinner; there is no change. When we talk in the evening, and I remind
Sir Tom of the past when I lived in Florence, and he was with me every
day,"--the Contessa once more uttered that easy exclamation which would
sound so profane in English. "_Quelle vie!_" she cried, "how much we got
out of every day. There