“I’ve guessed nothing. What should I have suspected? I don’t know what you mean.”
“That’s because you’ve such a beastly pure mind. I never saw a woman with such a pure mind!” cried the Countess.
Isabel slowly got up. “You’re going to tell me something horrible.”
“You can call it by whatever name you will!” And the Countess rose also, while her gathered perversity grew vivid and dreadful. She stood a moment in a sort of glare of intention and, as seemed to Isabel even then, of ugliness; after which she said: “My first sister-in-law had no children.”
Isabel stared back at her; the announcement was an anticlimax. “Your first sister-in-law?”
“I suppose you know at least, if one may mention it, that Osmond has been married before! I’ve never spoken to you of his wife; I thought it mightn’t be decent or respectful. But others, less particular, must have done so. The poor little woman lived hardly three years and died childless. It wasn’t till after her death that Pansy arrived.”
Isabel’s brow had contracted to a frown; her lips were parted in pale, vague wonder. She was trying to follow; there seemed so much more to follow than she could see. “Pansy’s not my husband’s child then?”
“Your husband’s—in perfection! But no one else’s husband’s. Some one else’s wife’s. Ah, my good Isabel,” cried the Countess, “with you one must dot one’s i’s!”
“I don’t understand. Whose wife’s?” Isabel asked.
“The wife of a horrid little Swiss who died—how long?—a dozen, more than fifteen, years ago. He never recognised Miss Pansy, nor, knowing what he was about, would have anything to say to her; and there was no reason why he should. Osmond did, and that was better; though he had to fit on afterwards the whole rigmarole of his own wife’s having died in childbirth, and of his having, in grief and horror, banished the little girl from his sight for as long as possible before taking her home from nurse. His wife had really died, you know, of quite another matter and in quite another place: in the Piedmontese mountains, where they had gone, one August, because her health appeared to require the air, but where she was suddenly taken worse—fatally ill. The story passed, sufficiently; it was covered by the appearances so long as nobody heeded, as nobody cared to look into it. But of course I knew—without researches,” the Countess lucidly proceeded; “as also, you’ll understand, without a word said between us—I mean between Osmond and me. Don’t you see him looking at me, in silence, that way, to settle it?—that is to settle me if I should say anything. I said nothing, right or left—never a word to a creature, if you can believe that of me: on my honour, my dear, I speak of the thing to you now, after all this time, as I’ve never, never spoken. It was to be enough for me, from the first, that the child was my niece—from the moment she was my brother’s daughter. As for her veritable mother—!” But with this Pansy’s wonderful aunt dropped—as, involuntarily, from the impression of her sister-in-law’s face, out of which more eyes might have seemed to look at her than she had ever had to meet.