“I do not pretend,” she said; “because it is comme il faut? but, yes, that is all natural. Yet I do not pretend. I wish to show de l’amitié for Madame Suzanne. I will not give up my ideas, nor do what you will, instead of that which I will; but to be good friends, this is what I desire. Bébé is satisfied--he asks no more--he demands not the sacrifice. Why not Madame Suzanne too?”
“Go away, go away, please,” cried Miss Susan, faintly. She was not capable of anything more.
Giovanna shrugged her handsome shoulders, and gave an appealing look round her, as if to some unseen audience. She felt that nothing but native English stupidity could fail to see her good sense and honest meaning. Then, perceiving further argument to be hopeless, she turned away, with the child still on her shoulder, and ere she had reached the end of the passage, began to sing to him with her sweet, rich, untutored voice. The voice receded, carolling through all the echoes of the old house like a bird, floating up the great oaken staircase, and away to the extremity of the long corridor, where her room was. She was perfectly light-hearted and easy-minded in the resolution to do the best for herself; and she was perfectly aware that the further scheme she had concocted for her own benefit would be still more displeasing to the present mistress of the house. She did not care for that the least in the world; but, honestly, she was well-disposed toward Miss Susan, and not only willing, but almost anxious, so far as anxiety was possible to her, to establish a state of affairs in which they might be good friends.
But to Miss Susan it was absolutely impossible to conceive that things so incompatible could yet exist together. Perhaps she was dimly aware of the incongruities in her own mind, the sense of guilt and the sense of innocence which existed there, in opposition, yet, somehow, in that strange concord which welds the contradictions of the human soul into one, despite of all incongruity; but to realize or believe in the strange mixture in Giovanna’s mind was quite impossible to her. She sat still with her face covered until she was quite sure the young woman and her child had gone, listening, indeed, to the voice which went so lightly and sweetly through the passages. How could she sing--that woman! whom if she had never seen, Susan Austin would still have been an honest woman, able to look everybody in the face! Miss Susan knew--no one better--how utterly foolish and false it was to say this; she knew that Giovanna was but the instrument, not the originator, of her own guilt; but, notwithstanding the idea having once occurred to her, that had she never seen Giovanna, she would never have been guilty, she hugged it to her bosom with an insane satisfaction, feeling as if, for the moment, it was a relief. Oh, that she had never seen her! How blameless she had been before that unhappy meeting! how free of all weight upon her conscience! and now, how burdened, how miserable, how despotic that conscience was! and her good name dependent upon the discretion of this creature, without discretion, without feeling, this false, bold foreigner, this intruder, who had thrust her way into a quiet house, to destroy its peace! When she was quite sure that Giovanna was out of the way, Miss Susan went to her own room, and looked piteously at her own worn face in the glass. Did that face tell the same secrets to others as it did to herself? she wondered. She had never been a vain woman, even in her youth, though she had been comely enough, if not pretty; but now, a stranger, who did not know Miss Susan, might have thought her vain. She looked at herself so often in the glass, pitifully studying her looks, to see what could be read in them. It had come to be one of the habits of her life.