her
home and privacy induced him to make a great sacrifice, to withdraw his
opposition to those proceedings of hers of which he so much disapproved?
And yet in an afternoon, in one interview, the Contessa had got the
upper hand! Her cleverness was extraordinary. It tickled him so that he
could not take time to think how very little satisfied he was with the
result. He, too, had fallen under her enchantments in the country, in
the stillness, if not dulness, of those long evenings, and he had been
very willing to be good to her for the sake of old times, to make her as
comfortable as possible, to give her time to settle her plans for her
London campaign. But that she should begin that campaign under his own
roof, and that Lucy, his innocent and simple wife, should be visible to
the world as the friend and ally of a lady whose name was too well known
to society, was by no means satisfactory to Sir Tom. When his first
astonishment and amazement was over, he began to look grave; but what
was he to do? He had so much respect for Lucy that when the idea
occurred to him of warning her that the Contessa's antecedents were not
of a comfortable kind, and that her generosity was mistaken, he rejected
it again with a sort of panic, and did not dare, experienced and
courageous as he was, to acknowledge to his little wife that he had
ventured to bring to her house a woman of whom it could be said that she
was not above suspicion. Sir Tom had dared a great many perils in his
life, but he did not venture to face this. He recoiled from before it,
as he would not have done from any lion in the way. He could not even
suggest to her any reticence in her communications, any reserve in
showing herself at the Contessa's side, or in inviting other people to
meet her. If all his happiness depended upon it, he felt that he could
not disturb Lucy's mind by any such warning. Confess to her that he had
brought to her a woman with whom scandal had been busy, that he had
introduced to her as his friend, and recommended to honour and kindness,
one whose name had been in all men's mouths! Sir Tom ran away morally
from this suggestion as if he had been the veriest coward; he could not
breathe a word of it in Lucy's ear. How could he explain to her that
mixture of amazement at the woman's boldness, and humorous sense of the
incongruity of her appearance in the absolute quiet of an English home,
without company, which, combined with ancient kindness and care