The Countess Disthal, of course, had been
always at her elbow, and when she had to go to the window and do the
gracious her anxiety lest she should bestow one smile too few had only
been surpassed by the Countess's anxiety lest she should bestow one
smile too many. Well, that was done with now; as much done with as a
nightmare, grisly staleness, is done with when you wake to a fair
spring morning and the smell of dew. And she had no fears. She was
sure, knowing him as she did, that when the Grand Duke found out she
had run away he would make no attempt to fetch her back, but would
simply draw a line through his remembrance of her, rub her out of his
mind, (his heart, she knew, would need no rubbing, because she had
never been in it,) and after the first fury was over, fury solely on
account of the scandal, he would be as he had been before, while
she--oh wonderful new life!--she would be born again to all the
charities.
Now how can I, weak vessel whose only ballast is a cargo of
interrogations past which life swirls with a thunder of derisively
contradictory replies, pretend to say whether Priscilla ought to have
had conscience-qualms or not? Am I not deafened by the roar of
answers, all seemingly so right yet all so different, that the
simplest question brings? And would not the answering roar to anything
so complicated as a question about conscience-qualms deafen me for
ever? I shall leave the Princess, then, to run away from her home and
her parent if she chooses, and make no effort to whitewash any part of
her conduct that may seem black.
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