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.
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