Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/213

 Madame de Lamouderie as she heard these words showed an altered countenance. They sobered her. She was drawn outside the consideration of her own griefs. 'She told you?'

'Yes. About her father and her mother.'

'Why did she tell you?' said Madame de Lamouderie after a moment.

'She felt that I was fond of her and ought to know.'

Madame de Lamouderie looked into the fire. 'I should not have told you had I been she. I should tell nobody of such a thing.'

'Not even a friend? It seems to me just what one would tell to a friend.'

'No.' The old lady shook her head. 'Not even to a friend. What is a friend? What does Marthe know of you? Such avowals put one at a disadvantage.'

'A disadvantage? I don't understand you.'

'Our sorrows are always disadvantages to us,' said Madame de Lamouderie, and as she gazed into the smouldering fire she looked like a sibyl, old, wise, and sinister, drawn in black and silver on the failing day. They count against us with the world. They make us of so much less value and consequence.'

'Perhaps that was what Mademoiselle Ludérac thought. Perhaps that was why she felt I ought to know—lest I should think her of more consequence than she was!' Jill spoke with her measured gravity, though the form of her words was ironic. 'She can't think so now. It may be true of the world, what you say; but it's not true of decent people.'