If Corbario guessed that the Contessa did not trust him, he never showed
it. He had found her installed as his wife's friend, and had accepted
her, treating her with much courtesy and a sort of vicarious affection;
but though he tried his best he could not succeed in reaching anything
like intimacy with her, and while she seemed to conceal nothing, he felt
that she was hiding her real self from him. Whether she did so out of
pride, or distrust, or jealousy, he could never be sure. He was secretly
irritated and humiliated by her power to oppose him and keep him at a
distance without ever seeming to do so; but, on the other hand, he was
very patient, very tenacious of his purpose, and very skilful. He knew
something of the Contessa's past, but he recognised in her the nature
that has known the world's worst side and has done with it for ever, and
is lifted above it, and he knew the immense influence which the
spectacle of a blameless life exercises upon the opinion of a good woman
who has not always been blameless herself. Whatever he had been before
he met his wife, whatever strange plans had been maturing in his brain
since he had married her, his life had seemed as spotless from that day
as the existence of the best man living. His wife believed in him, and
the Contessa did not; but even she must in time accept the evidence of
her senses. Then she, too, would trust him. Why it was essential that
she should, he alone knew, unless he was merely piqued by her quiet
reserve, as a child is when it cannot fix the attention of a grown-up
person.
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