"
"Ah, this later past is nothing. But for six or seven years, as I
say, they had kept it up."
She was silent a little. "Why then did she want him to marry me?"
"Ah my dear, that's her superiority! Because you had money; and
because she believed you would be good to Pansy."
"Poor woman-and Pansy who doesn't like her!" cried Isabel.
"That's the reason she wanted some one whom Pansy would like. She
knows it; she knows everything."
"Will she know that you've told me this?"
"That will depend upon whether you tell her. She's prepared for
it, and do you know what she counts upon for her defence? On your
believing that I lie. Perhaps you do; don't make yourself
uncomfortable to hide it. Only, as it happens this time, I don't. I've
told plenty of little idiotic fibs, but they've never hurt any one but
myself."
Isabel sat staring at her companion's story as at a bale of
fantastic wares some strolling gypsy might have unpacked on the carpet
at her feet. "Why did Osmond never marry her?" she finally asked.
"Because she had no money." The Countess had an answer for
everything, and if she lied she lied well. "No one knows, no one has
ever known, what she lives on, or how she has got all those
beautiful things.
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