Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/500

THE AMERICAN "Why, Mrs. Bread," he answered, "I've not my natural balance. If you mean I don't look sunny I guess I look as I feel. To be very indifferent and very fierce, very dull and very violent, very sick and very fine, all at once—well, it rather mixes one up."

Mrs. Bread gave a noiseless sigh. "I can tell you something that will make you feel queerer still, if you want to feel all one way. About the poor Countess."

"What can you tell me?" Newman quickly asked. "Not that you've seen her?"

She shook her head. "No indeed, sir, nor ever shall. That's the dead weight of it. Nor my lady. Nor M. de Bellegarde."

"You mean she's kept so close?"

"The closest they keep any."

These words for an instant seemed to check the beating of his heart. Leaning back in his chair he felt sick. "They've tried to see her and she wouldn't—she could n't?"

"She refused—for ever! I had it from my lady's own maid," said Mrs. Bread, "who had it from my lady. To speak of it to such a person my lady must have felt the shock. The Countess declines to receive them now, and now's her only chance. A short while hence she'll have no choice."

"You mean the other women—the mothers, the daughters, the sisters; what is it they call them?—won't let her?"

"It's what they call the rule of the house—or I believe of the order. There's no rule so strict as that of the Carmelites. The bad women in the reformatories are fine ladies to them. They wear old 470