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.

‘After it was over—­my supplice,’ continued the Countess, ’I was questioned by all the ladies—­I mean our ladies—­not your English.  They wanted to know how I could be so civil to that intolerable man.  I gained a deal of credit, my dears.  I laid it all on—­Diplomacy.’  The Countess laughed bitterly.  ’Diplomacy bears the burden of it all.  I pretended that Combleman could be useful to Silva!  Oh! what hypocrites we all are, mio Deus!’

The ladies listening could not gainsay this favourite claim of universal brotherhood among the select who wear masks instead of faces.