"I had
hoped that she might come with us."
"She has settled the matter for herself, my dear. After this
extraordinary performance, I must really decline to be responsible for
her any longer."
It was characteristic of his methods that when he had begun to talk
over the matter before dinner, she had not been able to guess at all
how he would ultimately look at it, and that he only let her know his
real intention by degrees. Possibly, he had only wished to gain time
to think it over. She did not know that he had asked Malipieri to
leave the Palazzo Conti, and if she had, it might not have occurred to
her that there was any connection between that and his desire to get
rid of Sabina. His ways were complicated, when they were not
unpleasantly direct, not to say brutal.
But the Baroness was much more human, and had grown fond of the girl,
largely because she had no daughter of her own, and had always longed
to have one. Ambitious women, if they have the motherly instinct,
prefer daughters to sons. One cannot easily tell what a boy may do
when he grows up, but a girl can be made to do almost anything by her
own mother, or to marry almost any one. The Baroness's regret for
losing Sabina took the form of confiding to her husband what she had
hoped to do for the girl.
"I am very sorry," she said, "but if you wish her to go, she must
leave us.
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