I lowered my eyes. She would have known that letters from the Comte had arrived this day and that there was one among them for me, which was significant. If you are sure you wish me to read them . ” I began.

“I think it is important that you do.” She laid the packet on the dressing-table.

“Goodnight,” she added, and left me.

I lighted the three candles of the candelabrum by my bedside and got into bed. Propped up by pillows, I untied the letters. They were numbered one, two and three.

The handwriting was firm and I felt reluctant to unfold them and read them, for they had not been intended for me and I felt I was prying on something private. Curious as I was to learn about Ursule, I was very reluctant to read her letters, and if I were honest I would admit that that reluctance was caused by the fear of what I should find rather than a sense of correct behaviour. I was afraid of what I should read about the Comte. I opened the first of the letters. My dear Yvette, How good it is to write to you. Our letters are, as you know, a source of great comfort to me. Writing them is like talking to you and you know how I always liked to tell you everything.

Life goes on as before. Nouny with my petit dejeuner, drawing the curtains, making sure the sun doesn’t bother me and that I aim wrapped up against draughts. Not that she would allow any in my room.

Marguerite is back now after her long sojourn abroad. There is someone with her called a cousin . a fiction if ever there was. It is a new gambit with him. He has never called them cousins before. This one is English. Marguerite knew her during her stay in England. She has been presented to me. A tall, good-looking girl with rather beautiful hair-masses of it-and blue eyes of a deep and unusual shade. She seems to have a good conceit of herself, an air of independence and is not in the least frivolous. In fact I was surprised, for she is not his type at all. I watch her in the gardens with Marguerite. One always learns so much about people when they are unaware of one’s observation. There is a change in him. It has suddenly struck me that this time he may be serious.

I had an uncomfortable pain yesterday afternoon. Nouny made a great fuss about it and insisted on my taking her mistletoe cure. She went on and on about her herbs and plants as you know she is fond of doing.

I have already heard about six hundred times that the Druids called it that plant that cures all ills and it is said to produce immortality.

Anyway, Nouny’s draught soothed me and I slept most of the afternoon, I haven’t seen him for a week. I dare say he will come in to pay his duty call. It amazes me that he bothers to.

I dread his visits and I fancy it would be no deprivation to him to dispense with them.

But what I wanted to tell you was that this time he was different.

Usually he sits in the chair and his eyes keep going to the clock. I know he is asking himself how much longer he need stay. He can never hide his contempt. It is there in his eyes, in his voice and the very way he sits in the chair. He is impatient.

Nouny told him about my pain. You know how she is with him . blaming him for everything. If I cut my finger she would find some way of saying it was his faultj And then I fancied I saw something in his eyes . speculation It is something to do with this girl. She is the most unlikely one you could imagine. She was a schoolteacher;

I remember hearing something of her when I was in England not long ago. What a dreadful time that was i But he insisted on my going because we had to see Marguerite. I felt ill all the time, as you know, and I hated to be separated from Nouny. She was frantic until I came back and then started dosing me with all sorts of concoctions to purge me of the contamination of foreign parts!

But the girl . He must have seen her then, for Marguerite was at a school run by the girl’s mother. She speaks

French very well indeed.

I saw him in the gardens with her once. I couldn’t see them very clearly, of course, but there was something in his gestures, his attitude . I don’t think she is his mistress . yet. I laughed so much when I saw them in the gardens that Nouny thought I was going into hysterics. I was thinking about Gabrielle LeGrand

Ours is a very strange household. Well, what can one expect with such a man at the head of it ! It is always good writing to you, Yvette. I should be desolate without our letters. I feel so tired sometimes. Like someone outside life looking in on it. I rather like it that way.

I look forward to hearing your news, dear Yvette, and you must not think I do not love all the details. The fact that Jose burned the potage and birds have ruined the plum crop interests me greatly. I like to know that there is another side of life. Here I feel we live high drama all the time. That makes the quiet life seem very sweet.

Perhaps it is what I am trying to escape to. So write, dear Yvette.

Goodnight.

Ursule. I finished the first letter and folded it. My heart was beating uncomfortably fast. I could see that these letters were going to be revealing. Already I had seen myself through other eyes and I knew that I had been observed when I had not known it.

Yvette was telling me that I should go away. I should not be caught up in this drama into which, if I continued my association with the Comte, I should be drawn. I opened the second letter. My dear Yvette, I’ve had a further dose of the mistletoe cure. Nouny is going round grunting like a grampus with a kind of mingling disapproval and satisfaction-disapproval for the pain, satisfaction for the cure.

She has spoken to him about it and said she wants the doctors. It is fussing of her. I know what’s in her mind. She is thinking of my mother. I never really heard the truth of that. They hushed it up and kept a lot from me. She took her own life, I know, because she was afraid of the future. It was that painful illness which was going to be worse and kill her eventually. No matter what they try to keep from one, there is always gossip to be heard. I have often pretended to be asleep when I was lying there listening to the servants. I have a gift, as you know, for seeming to take in nothing when I am taking in everything. I think they were afraid for me to know too much in case I-who am also ill-might do the same. If Nouny knows me at all she knows that I would never take my own life. I feel very strongly about this. I have always felt it. Remember how we used to talk about it? I still believe that one must work out one’s re1e on earth, however uncomfortable. It’s part of a pattern. Nouny gets terribly worked up about what’s going to happen to me. She’s always saying: “What’s going to happen to you when I’m gone?”

“Gone where, Nouny?” I ask teasingly. To Heaven,” she says.

I laugh at her and she gets so upset I have to cos set her and tell her how important she is to me just to placate her. I agreed to see the doctors and she is talking to him about it. I am sure he says: “More malingering.” But what do I care?

I am certain that his feelings for the schoolmistress girl are different from usual. This one appears not to be just a woman but the woman. For how long, is another matter, but he is certainly obsessed at the time. Nouny is very angry. She hates the girl. Marguerite is very fond of her, though. They are together a good deal. They keep up the myth of cousin. It is a good way of keeping her at the chateau with out too much comment. Of course the girl’s presence here is causing a lot of heart burning in some quarters, as you can guess.

When I think of Gabrielle LeGrand  brooding in that’) house of hers like a great spider waiting to catch her fly, I laugh so much that Nouny gets out the Lady’s Bedstraw. That’s the cure for hysteria in case you’ve forgotten. I have learned quite a lot about these things.

Living with Nouny how could one help it? I wonder what Gabrielle thinks of our young lady. Well, while I’m here, what does it matter?

Gabrielle comforts herself that I am the invalid and must eventually succumb to my ailments. And she has the stalwart

Etienne to offer. A son . the hope of the house. Oh, Yvette, what an insult to our sex! We are the unwanted ones. If Marguerite had been a boy, who knows how different our lives might have been. How many women in the world have been cast out for the only reason that they cannot bear a son. What a commentary on our society. But I was fortunate.

Many have to endure years and years of childbearing . daughter, daughter all the time . and often miscarriages. I escaped that. I never want those early experiences to happen again. I was not meant for that. I knew it at once and so did he . that was why he hated me. You know the sort of man he is. Women are as necessary to him as air. He cannot live without them. It was so from the beginning of his manhood. It will be so to the end. That is why the affair of the schoolmistress is so strange. Of course that could not last. that obsession for one. But it is strange that it should exist at all.

Nouny won’t admit it, but she appears to be quite a pleasant creature.

She has a natural dignity and doesn’t give herself airs. She has been strictly brought up and is holding him off, I suspect, because her upbringing would not allow her to indulge in a light love affair with him. Well, we shall see.

The doctors came today. They prodded me and asked endless questions.

Then there was a long conference with Nouny. He was not there, which tfaey must have thought strange. He thought the whole thing was a farce. So it was. It was just to placate Nouny. She went about looking grave and making me rest and asking if I felt any pain. I pretended a bit because that was what she wanted and it gave her a chance to get out the mistletoe cure. Goodnight. I am going to sleep now. Ursule.

There was one more letter. I was beginning to see Ursule as quite a different person from the one I had imagined. She was not the peevish invalid. What she had hated was her marriage. I believed she would have hated marriage with anyone. She was without passion, without maternal instincts. But she could have affection. She clearly had that for NouNou and Yvette. She did not want to take part in life. She wanted to spend her days in her room, observing the conduct of those about her. Instead of being aloof, though, she was enormously interested in what was going on. She was like the audience at a play;

she wanted to see how they acted while she herself took no part. I picked up the last letter. My dear Yvette, I have suddenly become aware of the drama all about me. It is as though they have all sprung to life. We are on the verge of a revolution, I believe. I have been reading the papers. I know things are very much more grave than we have allowed ourselves to believe. I wonder what will happen to us. I chatted to one of the maids who came in to clean. Nouny was having a nap so she could talk freely to me, which she wouldn’t dare do if Nouny was around. Anything unpleasant, as you know, has to be kept from me. I learned from the girl that there have been riots in various places all over the country and that the people are going to rise and demand their rights. Spoken, I must say, with a certain satisfaction. She looked at my negligee as she talked as though at the given moment she would have that as her share.

It is very distressing and I started to wonder what would happen to me if there was this turn-about. I cannot imagine anyone’s trying to take his chateau from him, can you? He would subdue them with a look.

All this going on and our not being aware of it, makes me see that there are things happening under my very nose, as it were, which I have not been looking at squarely.

He is still longing for the school lady and she remains aloof. Perhaps she knows it is the way to increase his ardour. But I am not sure. I think she is rather wise. From the little I have gathered from Marguerite she is the fount of all wisdom. It is always Minelle this . and Minelle that. Minelle is our school lady. I think that is Marguerite’s version of her name. It sounds French but the lady is as English as it is possible for anyone to be. Our tongue sounds a little incongruous on her lips though she speaks it perfectly.

He wants me out of the way. Of course he has been wanting that for a long time but never as fervently as now. When I say out of the way, I do not mean just out of sight, but off the earth. I suddenly realized this with a shock, because as you know he is a man who, when he wants, wants fiercely and does not rest until he has it.