'How very strange it was about the little girl!' the Contessa said
to Lady Mottisfont, in her gay tones. 'I mean, that the child the
lawyer recommended should, just before then, have been adopted by
you, who are now my neighbour. How is she getting on? I must come
and see her.'
'Do you still want her?' asks Lady Mottisfont suspiciously.
'Oh, I should like to have her!'
'But you can't! She's mine!' said the other greedily.
A drooping mariner appeared in the Countess from that moment.
Lady Mottisfont, too, was in a wretched mood all the way home that
day. The Countess was so charming in every way that she had charmed
her gentle ladyship; how should it be possible that she had failed
to charm Sir Ashley? Moreover, she had awakened a strange thought
in Philippa's mind. As soon as she reached home she rushed to the
nursery, and there, seizing Dorothy, frantically kissed her; then,
holding her at arm's length, she gazed with a piercing
inquisitiveness into the girl's lineaments. She sighed deeply,
abandoned the wondering Dorothy, and hastened away.
She had seen there not only her husband's traits, which she had
often beheld before, but others, of the shade, shape, and expression
which characterized those of her new neighbour.
Then this poor lady perceived the whole perturbing sequence of
things, and asked herself how she could have been such a walking
piece of simplicity as not to have thought of this before.
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