And now, without warning or preparation, she found herself face to face with the fact that Blaise had been married—that he had belonged to another woman! It seemed to set her suddenly very far apart from him, and a fierce, intolerable jealousy of that other woman leaped to life in her heart, racking her with an anguish that was almost physical. She was confused, bewildered, by the storm of emotion which suddenly swept her whole being.
“Married her?” she repeated with dry lips.
“Yes. Didn’t you know that Blaise was a widower?”
Had Lady Anne divined the stress under which the girl was labouring that she so quickly interposed the knowledge that his wife was dead?
“No,” answered Jean unsteadily. “I didn’t even know that he had been married.”
The fact of that other woman’s being dead did not serve to allay the tumult within her. She had lived, and while she lived she had been his wife!
“Yes, he married her.” Lady Anne went on speaking in level tones. “I think matters were hurried to a climax by the fact that Nesta’s step-sister, Margherita Valdi, detested English people. She was much the elder of the two, and as their mother had died when Nesta was born, she had practically brought the girl up. She would never have countenanced the idea of her marrying an Englishman, but Nesta so contrived her meetings with Blaise that Margherita was unaware of his very existence, and eventually they married without her knowledge. From that day onward, Margherita declined to hold any communication with her sister.”
“Why had she such a rooted antipathy to the English?” Jean had recovered her composure during the course of Lady Anne’s narrative, and now put her question with a very good semblance of detachment. But, inside, her brain was dully hammering out the words “Married—married!”
“It seems that Margherita’s step-father—Nesta’s father, of course,—who was an Englishman, treated his wife extremely badly, and Margherita, who had adored her mother, never forgave him and hated all Englishmen in consequence. At least, that was what Nesta told Blaise, and it seems quite probable. Italians are a hot-blooded race, you know, and very vindictive and revengeful. Of course, these Valdis were of no particular family—that was where the trouble began. Nesta was just a rather second-rate, though extraordinarily beautiful girl, suddenly elevated to a position which she was not in the least fitted to fill. It didn’t take a month for the glamour to wear off—and for Blaise to see her as I saw her. He came to his senses to find himself married to a bit of soulless, passionate flesh and blood. Oh, Jean! If I could only have been there—in Italy, to have saved him from it all!”
Jean hardly heeded that instinctive mother-cry. She was keyed up to know the end of the story. She felt as though she must scream if Lady Anne were long about the telling.