"It's very kind of you to pity her!" she discordantly laughed.
"Yes indeed, you have a way of your own-!"
"He must have been false to his wife-and so very soon!" said
Isabel with a sudden check.
"That's all that's wanting-that you should take up her cause!" the
Countess went on. "I quite agree with you, however, that it was much
too soon." "But to me, to me-?" And Isabel hesitated as if she had not
heard; as if her question-though it was sufficiently there in her
eyes-were all for herself.
"To you he has been faithful? Well, it depends, my dear, on what you
call faithful. When he married you he was no longer the lover of
another woman-such a lover as he had been, cara mia, between their
risks and their precautions, while the thing lasted! That state of
affairs had passed away; the lady had repented, or at all events,
for reasons of her own, drawn back: she had always had, too, a worship
of appearances so intense that even Osmond himself had got bored
with it. You may therefore imagine what it was-when he couldn't
patch it on conveniently to any of those he goes in for! But the whole
past was between them."
"Yes," Isabel mechanically echoed, "the whole past is between them.
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