She had discovered how, in the aristocracy
of European wealth, an admired mistress was as much a
necessary part of the grandeur of great nobles, great
financiers, great manufacturers, or merchants, as wife, as
heir, as palace, as equipage, as chef, as train of secretaries
and courtiers. She knew how deeply it would cut, to find
himself without his show piece that made him the envied of men
and the desired of women. Also, she knew that she had an even
stronger hold upon him--that she appealed to him as no other
woman ever had, that she had become for him a tenacious habit.
She was not afraid that he would break with her. But she
could not feel secure; in former days she had seen too far
into the mazes of that Italian mind of his, she knew too well
how patient, how relentless, how unforgetting he was. She
would have taken murder into account as more than a
possibility but for his intense and intelligent selfishness;
he would not risk his life or his liberty; he would not
deprive himself of his keenest pleasure. He was resourceful;
but in the circumstances what resources were there for him to
draw upon?
When he began to press upon her more money than ever, and to
buy her costly jewelry, she felt still further reassured.
Evidently he had been unable to think out any practicable
scheme; evidently he was, for the time, taking the course of
appeal to her generous instincts, of making her more and more
dependent upon his liberality.
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