effrontery to bring any other girl to your house.
It was more shameless, I think, to bring that one than any other; but
she would not think so. Oh, cannot you see it even now? Why, the
likeness might have told you; that was enough. The girl is Tom's girl.
She is your husband's----"

Lucy uncovered her face, which was perfectly colourless, with eyes
dilated and wide open. "What?" she whispered, looking intently into Lady
Randolph's face.

"His own child--his--daughter--though I am bitterly ashamed to say it,"
the Dowager said.

For a moment everything seemed to waver and turn round in Lucy's eyes,
as if the walls were making a circuit with her in giddy space. Then she
came to her feet with the sensation of a shock, and found herself
standing erect, with the most amazing incomprehensible sense of relief.
Why should she have felt relieved by this communication which filled her
companion with horror? A softer air seemed to breathe about Lucy, she
felt solid ground under her feet. For the first moment there seemed
nothing but ease and sweet soothing and refreshment in what she heard.

"His--daughter?" she said. Her mind went back with a sudden flash upon
the past, gathering up instantaneously pieces of corroborative evidence,
things which she had not noted at the moment, which she had forgotten,
yet which came back nevertheless when they were needed: the Contessa's
mysterious words about Bice's parentage, her intimation that Lucy would
one day be glad to have befriended her: Sir Tom's sudden agitation when
she had told him of Bice's English descent: finally, and most conclusive
of all, touching Lucy with a most unreasonable conviction and bringing a
rush of warm feeling to her heart, Baby's adoption of the girl and
recommendation of her to his mother. Was it not the voice of nature, the
voice of God? Lucy had no instinctive sense of recoil, no horror of the
discovery. She did not realise the guilt involved, nor was she painfully
struck, as some women might have been, by this evidence of her husband's
previous life "If it is so," she said quietly, "there is more reason
than ever, Aunt Randolph, that I should do everything I can for Bice. It
never came into my mind before. I see now--various things: but I do not
see why it should--make me unhappy," she added with a faint smile which
brought the water to her eyes; "it must have been--long before I knew
him. Will you tell me who was her mother? Was she a foreigner? Did she