JULIA.  Are you not my friend?

JEAN.  Yes, at times—­but don’t rely on me.

JULIA.  You only talk like that—­and besides, my secrets are known to everybody.  You see, my mother was not of noble birth, but came of quite plain people.  She was brought up in the ideas of her time about equality, and woman’s independence, and that kind of thing.  And she had a decided aversion to marriage.  Therefore, when my father proposed to her, she said she wouldn’t marry him—­and then she did it just the same.  I came into the world—­against my mother’s wish, I have come to think.  Then my mother wanted to bring me up in a perfectly natural state, and at the same time I was to learn everything that a boy is taught, so that I might prove that a woman is just as good as a man.  I was dressed as a boy, and was taught how to handle a horse, but could have nothing to do with the cows.  I had to groom and harness and go hunting on horseback.  I was even forced to learn something about agriculture.  And all over the estate men were set to do women’s work, and women to do men’s—­with the result that everything went to pieces and we became the laughing-stock of the whole neighbourhood.  At last my father must have recovered from the spell cast over him, for he rebelled, and everything was changed to suit his own ideas.  My mother was taken sick—­what kind of sickness it was I don’t know, but she fell often into convulsions, and she used to hide herself in the garret or in the garden, and sometimes she stayed out all night.  Then came the big fire, of which you have heard.  The house, the stable, and the barn were burned down, and this under circumstances which made it look as if the fire had been set on purpose.  For the disaster occurred the day after our insurance expired, and the money sent for renewal of the policy had been delayed by the messenger’s carelessness, so that it came too late. [She fills her glass again and drinks.]

JEAN.  Don’t drink any more.

JULIA.  Oh, what does it matter!—­We were without a roof over our heads and had to sleep in the carriages.  My father didn’t know where to get money for the rebuilding of the house.  Then my mother suggested that he try to borrow from a childhood friend of hers, a brick manufacturer living not far from here.  My father got the loan, but was not permitted to pay any interest, which astonished him.  And so the house was built up again. [Drinks again] Do you know who set fire to the house?

JEAN.  Her ladyship, your mother!

JULIA.  Do you know who the brick manufacturer was?

JEAN.  Your mother’s lover?

JULIA.  Do you know to whom the money belonged?

JEAN.  Wait a minute—­no, that I don’t know.

JULIA.  To my mother.

JEAN.  In other words, to the count, if there was no settlement.

JULIA.  There was no settlement.  My mother possessed a small fortune of her own which she did not want to leave in my father’s control, so she invested it with—­her friend.