Alma was a great success. She had the homage of all the men, and being
understood to be rich, and having the gift of making every man believe
he was her special favourite, she was rarely without a group of Italian
noblemen about her chair.
With sharper eyes the Italian women saw that her real reckoning lay with
my husband, but they seemed to think no worse of her for that. They
seemed to think no worse of him either. It was nothing against him that,
having married me (as everybody appeared to know) for the settlement of
his financial difficulties, he had transferred his attentions, even on
his honeymoon, to this brilliant and alluring creature.
As for me, I was made to realise that I was a person of a different
class altogether. When people wished to be kind they called me
_spirituelle_, and when they were tempted to be the reverse they voted
me insipid.
As a result I became very miserable in this company, and I can well
believe that I may have seemed awkward and shy and stupid when I was in
some of their grey old palaces full of tapestry and bronze, for I
sometimes found the talk there so free (especially among the women) that
the poisoned jokes went quivering through me.
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