The girl’s colour faded at this second reference to her mother; made, she could not doubt, with intention. Her father, even while he had overwhelmed her with benefits, even while he had opened this new life to her with a hand full of gifts, had taught her—tacitly or by a word at most—that that name was the key to a Bluebeard’s chamber; that it must not be used. She knew that her mother lived; she guessed that she had sinned against her husband; she understood that she had wronged her child. But she knew no more: and with this, since this at the least she must know, Sir Robert would have had her content. And yet, to speak correctly, she did know more. She knew that the veiled lady who had intervened at long intervals in her life must have been her mother. But she felt no impulse of affection towards that woman—whom she had not seen. Her heart went out instead to a shadowy mother who walked the silent house at sunset, whose skirts trailed in the lonely passages, of whose career of wild and reckless gaiety she had vague hints here and there. It was to this mother, radiant and young, with the sheen of pearls in her hair, and the haunting smile, that she yearned. She had learned in some subtle way that the vacant place over the mantel in the hall which her own portrait by Maclise was to fill, had been occupied by her mother’s picture. And dreaming of the past, as what young girl alone in that stately house would not, she had seen her come and go in the half lights, a beautiful, spoilt child of fashion. She had traced her up and down the wide polished stairway, heard the tap of her slender sandal on the shining floors, perceived in long-closed chambers the fading odours of her favourite scent. And in a timid, frightened way she had longed to know her and to love her, to feel her touch on her hair and give her pity in return. It is possible that she might have dwelt more intimately on Lady Sybil’s fate, possible that she might have ventured on some line of her own in regard to her, if her new life had been free from preoccupation; if there had not been with her an abiding regret, which clouded the sunniest prospects. But love, man’s love, woman’s love, is the most cruel of monopolists: it tramples on the claims of the present, much more of the absent. And if the novelty of Mary’s new life, the many marvels to which she must accustom herself, the new pleasures, the new duties, the strange new feeling of wealth—if, in fine, the necessity of orientating herself afresh in relation to every person and everything—was not able to put thoughts of her lover from her mind, the claims of an unknown mother had an infinitely smaller chance of asserting themselves. But now at that word, twice pronounced by Lady Lansdowne, the girl stood ashamed and conscience-stricken. “You knew my mother?” she faltered. “Yes, my dear,” the elder woman answered gravely. “I knew her very well.”