ess reflected, because of a complete and rather smug satisfaction with her own provincial mode of existence which prevented her from exhibiting, or even feeling, any considerable curiosity regarding the lives of others. Lou accepted Ella because Ella was her sister, and it never occurred to her that there had been any metamorphosis since Ella had become the Countess Nattatorrini. Have I changed, after all? the Countess asked herself. As a girl she had always been brilliant and daring, Lou drab and conventional, but the life of a widow in European capitals—for the Count had died five years subsequent to their marriage—had offered opportunities for the expansion of these qualities. She had never, however, she recollected with a great deal of complacency, overstepped the boundaries of discretion. Even in her tempestuous affair with Tony she had been circumspect in certain important particulars. During the tournee they had—invariably engaged separate rooms in the hotels, and in Paris she had never met him save in his apartment or her own. She had never forfeited the respect of the Faubourg—although once or twice she had come dangerously near to doing so—never, indeed, lost touch with it, until this crisis in her affairs had made it impossible for her to consider going anywhere. She was quite fully aware then that there existed no unalterable cleavage between her and her past, no break that could not, conceivably, be crutched.
