She had spoken no name, yet Isabel could but check,on her own lips, an echo of the unspoken. She sank to her seat again, hanging her head. "Why have you told me this?" she asked in a voice the Countess hardly recognised.
"Because I've been so bored with your not knowing.I've been bored, frankly, my dear, with not having told you; as if, stupidly, all this time I couldn't have managed! ?a me depasse, if you don't mind my saying so, the things, all round you, that you've appeared to succeed in not knowing. It's a sort of assistance—aid to innocent ignorance—that I've always been a bad hand at rendering; and in this connexion, that of keeping quiet for my brother, my virtue has at any rate finally found itself exhausted. It's not a black lie,moreover, you know," the Countess inimitably added. "The facts are exactly what I tell you."