Inside everything was packed and arranged so beautifully she could not bring herself to disturb it, she hardly liked to keep the lid open. Muslin, cambric, silk scarves and lace vied with one another in delicacy, elegance and costliness. There was jewellery there too. She could see she had been given enough to clothe her from head to foot several times over, but it was all so costly and unfamiliar she did not dare to think it hers.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THE following morning the Captain had gone. He had left behind a note for his friends telling them of his gratitude. He and Charlotte had said a brief halting farewell the previous evening. She felt they were parting for ever and she acquiesced in it: the Captain had at last shown her the Count’s other letter and in that letter the Count also spoke of the prospect of an advantageous marriage; and although the Captain did not make any mention of that point, she took it for a certainty and wholly and entirely renounced him.

On the other hand, she now thought she could demand of others the same self-control she was exercising over herself. It had not been impossible for her, it ought to be possible for others. It was with this idea in mind that she took her husband aside and spoke with him. She spoke frankly and confidently because she felt the matter had now to be cleared up once and for all.

‘Our friend has left us,’ she said. ‘We are now back together as we were before, and it is now up to us whether we want to go back completely to our former life.’

Eduard, who heard nothing but what flattered his passion, believed that by these words Charlotte meant her former state of widowhood and that she was, if in an indirect way, holding out to him the hope of a divorce. He therefore replied with a smile: ‘Why not? It would only be a question of coming to an arrangement.’

He was therefore very painfully disabused when Charlotte replied: ‘We have to come to a decision now so that Ottilie too can be found another situation. There is at the moment a double opportunity to offer her a life she would find very desirable. Since my daughter has now gone to live with her great-aunt, Ottilie can return to the boarding-school, or she can be received into a house of repute and there enjoy with an only daughter all the advantages of an education appropriate to that station.’

‘In the meantime,’ Eduard replied, keeping himself tolerably in check, ‘Ottilie has been so spoiled by our friendly companionship any other would hardly be welcome to her.’

‘We have all been spoiled,’ said Charlotte, ‘and you not the least. Nevertheless, this is an epoch which challenges us to reflect and seriously admonishes us to think of what is best for all the members of our little circle and not to refuse any sacrifice that may be demanded of us.’

‘At any rate, I think it unfair that Ottilie should be sacrificed,’ Eduard replied, ‘and that is what it would mean if we took her now and planted her down among strangers. Good fortune found the Captain while he was here, we can see him go without any trepidation, with satisfaction even. Who knows what is waiting for Ottilie? Why should we be over hasty?’

‘It is pretty clear what is waiting for us,’ Charlotte replied with some agitation, and since she intended to speak her mind once and for all she went on: ‘You are in love with Ottilie, you are getting accustomed to having her about. And on her side too affection and passion are springing up and growing. Why should we not put into words what every hour proclaims and confesses? Ought we not to have enough foresight even to ask ourselves what this is going to lead to?’

Eduard controlled his feelings. ‘If we cannot answer that question straight away,’ he said, ‘this much can be said, that when we cannot say for certain how something is going to turn out we must resolve to wait and see what the future will teach us.’

‘To prophesy here,’ said Charlotte, ‘requires no great wisdom, and this much can at any rate be said straight away, that neither of us is any longer young enough to go blindly ahead on a course that will take us where we do not want to go or ought not to go. There is no longer anybody to look after us, we have to be our own friends and our own instructors. No one expects us to wander into an extremity of folly, no one expects us to make ourselves blameworthy, not to speak of ludicrous.’

‘Can you blame me,’ answered Eduard, who was incapable of responding to his wife’s frankness, ‘can you reproach me if I have Ottilie’s happiness at heart? And not some future happiness that can never be counted upon, but her happiness now? Imagine, honestly and without self-deception, imagine Ottilie torn from us and handed over to strangers – I at least do not think I could be cruel enough to demand she should endure such a change.’

Charlotte was well aware of the resolution that lay behind her husband’s dissimulation. Only now did she feel how far he had removed himself from her. With some agitation she exclaimed: ‘Can Ottilie be happy if she comes between us! If she deprives me of a husband and your children of a father!’

‘I would have thought our children were taken care of,’ said Eduard with a cold smile, but added more amiably: ‘We are surely not thinking yet of going to such extremes.’

‘Extremes and passion go hand in hand,’ Charlotte said. ‘While there is still time do not insist on refusing the good advice, the help I offer us both. When troubles come the one who sees most clearly must be the one to act. This time I am that one. Dear, dearest Eduard, leave things to me! Can you ask me to give up my well-earned happiness, my most treasured rights, without more ado, can you expect me to give you up?’

‘Who is asking you to do that?’ Eduard replied with some embarrassment.

‘You yourself are,’ Charlotte replied. ‘When you want to keep Ottilie beside you are you not conceding everything that must follow from that? I am not trying to talk you round, but if you are not able to master yourself at least you will no longer be able to deceive yourself.’

Eduard felt how much she was in the right. A spoken word is terrible when it says in a moment what the heart has for long allowed itself in secret; and it was only to put off the issue that Eduard answered: ‘I am not clear even yet what it is you have in mind.’

‘It was my intention,’ Charlotte replied, ‘to discuss with you these two suggestions about Ottilie’s future.