The Mask Slips Off — The House of Mirth

Lily comes on deck late and finds the Sabrina empty. A steward says Mrs. Dorset has not appeared and the gentlemen have gone ashore separately. She leans over the side in unclouded light, still able to enjoy the spectacle after moonlight hours of Ned Silverton reading Theocritus, then goes to breakfast with the Duchess of Beltshire, a distinction that has already cost Bertha. Carry Fisher, dropped by the Duchess at dinner, cannot palm Lily's arts off on Louisa Bry as her own. She is leaving that night for Paris with the Sam Gormers, who have paid for her salon-lit and still need saving from taking a courier for an Italian prince. Before she goes she tells Lily that she and Bertha are lunching together, but at heart it is Carry whom Bertha is lunching on. She leaves Bertha to Lily.

George Dorset finds Lily in the gardens and pulls up with one question: has she seen Bertha? He is shaken, talking of a one-horse cab and a lame horse after they missed the last train. He wants a lawyer. He names Selden at Nice. Lily, seeing how wide the peril has become, sends George to consult him and manages a telegram on her way to the quay. She tells herself Selden can combine the skill to save Bertha with the discretion she still trusts. Of Silverton there has been no mention.

She steps back onto the Sabrina expecting a wreck and finds Bertha in full command of the after-deck, dispensing tea to the Duchess and Lord Hubert as if the night had been ordinary. They talk of tomorrow's dinner with the Brys, which Lord Hubert has dragged them to. From the side-ladder he calls back to ask whether they may count on Dorset too. Bertha assents gaily. When the guests go, she does not drop the mask into fear. She says she waited at the station till the last train, calls George's story one of his attacks, and tells Lily she was rather a big responsibility in a scandalous place after midnight.

Lily laughs at the audacity and names the truth: it was Bertha who put George on her hands. Bertha smiles and turns the rush for the train into Lily's imprudence. A chill of remembered treachery crosses Lily, then pity for a woman who is doubling and turning. The words that might have offered a way out die under Bertha's smile. On deck Bertha can still pour tea for a duchess. Lily sits silent, taking the last of it, then rises without a word and goes down to her cabin.