As for her veritable mother-!" But with this Pansy's
wonderful aunt dropped 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.
She had spoken no name, yet Isabel could but check, on her own lips,
an echo of the unspoken. She sank to her seat again, hanging her head.
"Why have you told me this?" she asked in a voice the Countess
hardly recognized.
"Because I've been so bored with your not knowing. I've been
bored, frankly, my dear, with not having told you; as if, stupidly,
all this time I couldn't have managed! Ca me depasse, if you don't
mind my saying so, the things, all round you, that you've appeared
to succeed in not knowing. It's a sort of assistance-aid to innocent
ignorance-that I've always been a bad hand at rendering; and in this
connexion, that of keeping quiet for my brother, my virtue has at
any rate finally found itself exhausted. It's not a black lie,
moreover, you know," the Countess inimitably added. "The facts are
exactly what I tell you."
"I had no idea," said Isabel presently; and looked up at her in a
manner that doubtless matched the apparent witlessness of this
confession.
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