“‘And will you not tell me of your troubles?’ said I, in a voice which cannot be affected, as I wiped away my tears. ‘Have you not just now told me that you have been a mother, and have been so unhappy as to lose your child?’
“‘Marie!’ she called as she rang the bell. Gobain came in.
“‘Bring lights and some tea,’ said she, with the calm decision of a Mylady clothed in the armor of pride by the dreadful English training which you know too well.
“When the housekeeper had lighted the tapers and closed the shutters, the Countess showed me a mute countenance; her indomitable pride and gravity, worthy of a savage, had already reasserted their mastery. She said:
“‘Do you know why I like Lord Byron so much? It is because he suffered as animals do. Of what use are complaints when they are not an elegy like Manfred’s, nor bitter mockery like Don Juan’s, nor a reverie like Childe Harold’s? Nothing shall be known of me. My heart is a poem that I lay before God.’
“‘If I chose——’ said I.
“‘If?’ she repeated.
“‘I have no interest in anything,’ I replied, ‘so I cannot be inquisitive; but, if I chose, I could know all your secrets by to-morrow.’
“‘I defy you!’ she exclaimed, with ill-disguised uneasiness.
“‘Seriously?’