The
conditions happened to make it workable, under stress (I mean at so
awkward a pinch), that Osmond should acknowledge the little girl.
His wife was dead-very true; but she had not been dead too long to put
a certain accommodation of dates out of the question-from the
moment, I mean, that suspicion wasn't started; which was what they had
to take care of. What was more natural than that poor Mrs. Osmond,
at a distance and for a world not troubling about trifles, should have
left behind her, poverina, the pledge of her brief happiness that
had cost her life? With the aid of a change of residence-Osmond had
been living with her at Naples at the time of their stay in the
Alps, and he in due course left it for ever-the whole history was
successfully set going. My poor sister-in-law, in her grave,
couldn't help herself, and the real mother, to save her skin,
renounced all visible property in the child."
"Ah, poor, poor woman!" cried Isabel, who herewith burst into tears.
It was a long time since she had shed any; she had suffered a high
reaction from weeping. But now they flowed with an abundance in
which the Countess Gemini found only another discomfiture.
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