mutual behavior, she summoned superhuman strength to put on a wrapper
and come down to me.

"'You are not the cause of this attack,' said she. 'I am subject to
these spasms, a sort of cramp of the heart----'

"'And will you not tell me of your troubles?' said I, in a voice
which cannot be affected, as I wiped away my tears. 'Have you not just
now told me that you have been a mother, and have been so unhappy as
to lose your child?'

"'Marie!' she called as she rang the bell. Gobain came in.

"'Bring lights and some tea,' said she, with the calm decision of a
Mylady clothed in the armor of pride by the dreadful English training
which you know too well.

"When the housekeeper had lighted the tapers and closed the shutters,
the Countess showed me a mute countenance; her indomitable pride and
gravity, worthy of a savage, had already reasserted their mastery. She
said:

"'Do you know why I like Lord Byron so much? It is because he
suffered as animals do. Of what use are complaints when they are not
an elegy like Manfred's, nor bitter mockery like Don Juan's, nor a
reverie like Childe Harold's? Nothing shall be known of me. My heart
is a poem that I lay before God.'

"'If I chose----' said I.