COMTESSE. I believe your Haughtiness may find him in the Dutch garden. Oh, I see through you. You are not to show him your speech. But you are to get him to write another one, and somehow all your additions will be in it. Think not, creature, that you can deceive one so old in iniquity as the Comtesse de la Briere.
[There can be but one reply from a good wife to such a charge, and at once the COMTESSE is left alone with her shame. Anon a footman appears. You know how they come and go.]
FOOTMAN. You rang, my lady?
COMTESSE. Did I? Ah, yes, but why? [He is but lately from the ploughshare and cannot help her. In this quandary her eyes alight upon the bag. She is unfortunately too abandoned to feel her shame; she still thinks that she has the choice of weapons. She takes the speech from the bag and bestows it on her servitor.] Take this to Mr. Venables, please, and say it is from Mr. Shand. [THOMAS—but in the end we shall probably call him JOHN—departs with the dangerous papers; and when MAGGIE returns she finds that the COMTESSE is once more engaged in her interrupted game of Patience.] You did not find him?
[All the bravery has dropped from MAGGIE’s face.]
MAGGIE. I didn’t see him, but I heard him. SHE is with him. I think they are coming here.
[The COMTESSE is suddenly kind again.]
COMTESSE. Sybil? Shall I get rid of her?
MAGGIE. No, I want her to be here, too. Now I shall know.
[The COMTESSE twists the little thing round.]