dead--how can you make me
talk of them? And Bice perhaps with the fever in her veins, ready to
communicate it--to Majesty herself, to me, to every one!"

The Contessa sank down on a chair by the door. She drew forth her fan,
which hung by her side, and fanned away from her this air of pestilence.
"The child must come back at once," she said, with little cries and
sobs--an _acces de nerfs_, if these simple people had known--through her
handkerchief. "Let her come at once, and we may conceal it still. She
shall have baths. She shall be fumigated. I will not see her or let her
be seen. She shall have a succession of headaches. This is what I have
said to Montjoie. Imagine me out in the air, that is so bad for the
complexion, at this hour! But I think of nothing in comparison with the
interests of Bice. Send for her. Lucy, sweet one, you would not spoil
her prospects. Send for her--before it is known." Then she laughed with
a hysterical vehemence. "I see; some one has been telling her it was the
poor little child whom you left with me, whom I watched over--yes, I was
good to the little one. I am not a hard-hearted woman. Lucy: it was I
who put this thought into your mind. I said--of English parentage. I
meant you to believe so--that you might give something, when you were
giving so much, to my poor Bice. What was wrong? I said you would be
glad one day that you had helped her:--yes--and I allowed also my enemy
the Dowager, to believe it."

"To believe _that_." Lucy stood out alone in the middle of the room,
notwithstanding the shrinking back to the wall of the visitor, whose
alarm was far more visible than any other emotion. "To believe
_that_--that she was your child, and----"

Something stopped Lucy's mouth. She drew back, her pale face dyed with
crimson, her whole form quivering with remorse and pain as of one who
has given a cowardly and cruel blow.

The Contessa rose. She stood up against the wall. It did not seem to
occur to her what kind of terrible accusation this was, but only that
it was something strange, incomprehensible. She withdrew for a moment
the handkerchief from her mouth. "My child? But I have never had a
child!" she said.

"Lucy," cried Sir Tom in a terrible voice.

And then Lucy stood aghast between them, looking from one to another.
The scales seemed to fall from her eyes. The perfectly innocent when
they fall under the power of suspicion go farthest in that bitter way.
They take no limit of p