Here the Countess laughed out, but relapsed into: 

’Alas! that Belmarana should have betrayed that beautiful trusting creature to De Pel.  Such scandal! a duel!—­the Duke was wounded.  For a whole year Eugenia did not dare to appear at Court, but had to remain immured in her country-house, where she heard that Belmarana had married De Pel!  It was for her money, of course.  Rich as Croesus, and as wicked as the black man below! as dear papa used to say.  By the way, weren’t we talking of Evan?  Ah,—­yes!’

And so forth.  The Countess was immensely admired, and though her sisters said that she was ‘foreignized’ overmuch, they clung to her desperately.  She seemed so entirely to have eclipsed tailordom, or ‘Demogorgon,’ as the Countess was pleased to call it.  Who could suppose this grand-mannered lady, with her coroneted anecdotes and delicious breeding, the daughter of that thing?  It was not possible to suppose it.  It seemed to defy the fact itself.

They congratulated her on her complete escape from Demogorgon.  The Countess smiled on them with a lovely sorrow.

’Safe from the whisper, my dears; the ceaseless dread?  If you knew what I have to endure!  I sometimes envy you.  ’Pon my honour, I sometimes wish I had married a fishmonger!  Silva, indeed, is a most excellent husband.  Polished! such polish as you know not of in England.  He has a way—­a wriggle with his shoulders in company—­I cannot describe it to you; so slight! so elegant! and he is all that a woman could desire.  But who could be safe in any part of the earth, my dears, while papa will go about so, and behave so extraordinarily?  I was at dinner at your English embassy a month ago, and there was Admiral Combleman, then on the station off Lisbon, Sir Jackson Racial’s friend, who was the Admiral at Lymport formerly.  I knew him at once, and thought, oh! what shall I do!  My heart was like a lump of lead.  I would have given worlds that we might one of us have smothered the other!  I had to sit beside him—­ it always happens!  Thank heaven! he did not identify me.  And then he told an anecdote of Papa.  It was the dreadful old “Bath” story.  I thought I should have died.  I could not but fancy the Admiral suspected.  Was it not natural?  And what do you think I had the audacity to do?  I asked him coolly, whether the Mr. Harrington he mentioned was not the son of Sir Abraham Harrington, of Torquay,—­the gentleman who lost his yacht in the Lisbon waters last year?  I brought it on myself.  “Gentleman, ma’am,—­ma’am!” says the horrid old creature, laughing,” gentleman! he’s a—­” I cannot speak it:  I choke!  And then he began praising Papa.  Diacho! what I suffered.  But, you know, I can keep my countenance, if I perish.  I am a Harrington as much as any of us!’

And the Countess looked superb in the pride with which she said she was what she would have given her hand not to be.  But few feelings are single on this globe, and junction of sentiments need not imply unity in our yeasty compositions.