She would look upon her as a
burden and a nuisance, would shut her up if she could, and would
certainly go off to Russia or to Paris, to amuse herself as far as
possible from the scene of Sabina's unfortunate adventure.
"Poor child!" she would say to her intimate friends, "She was
perfectly innocent, of course, but there was nothing else to be done.
No decent man would have married her, you know!"
And she would tell Malipieri's story to everybody, too, to explain why
he had not married Sabina. She had no heart at all, for her children
or for any one else. She had always despised her son for his
weaknesses and miserable life, and she had always laughed at her elder
daughter; if she had been relatively kind to Sabina, it was because
the girl had never given any trouble nor asked for anything
extravagantly inconvenient. She had never felt the least sympathy with
the Roman life into which she had been brought by force, and after her
husband had died she had plainly shown his quiet Roman relatives what
she thought of them.
She would cast Sabina off without even a careless kind word, if Sabina
became a drag on her and hindered her from doing what she pleased in
the world. And this would happen, if the story about the night in the
Palazzo Conti were made public. Just so long, and no longer, would the
Princess acknowledge her daughter's existence; and that meant so long
as Volterra chose that the secret should be kept.
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