This six-sentence story was posted on sixsentences.blogspot.com and is a part of a sequel I am writing to Henry James's "The Portrait of a Lady." See my blog theportraitofaladyrevisited.blogspot.com.
Isabel Osmond was having difficulty swallowing her meager repast of fruit, tea, bread and honey after having come from her husband’s study an hour previous where they quarreled about a sum for an old master painting he wished to purchase that she felt they could not afford at this time.
While sitting in a small courtyard adjacent to the dining room in a desultory mood, Mrs. Osmond was delivered a telegram by mistake--a missive intended for Mr. Osmond from a woman who identified herself as Mrs. Halpern. The message sent to Mrs. Osmond’s husband, Gilbert Osmond suggested a time and a place for a meeting with an implication that it was of some urgency though not anything dire in nature.
Isabel at first confused as to the identity of the woman had her maid summoned and instructed her to dispatch the telegram to her husband’s butler, Higgins, not thinking much of the incident, assuming it was in relation to his lately manic acquisitiveness for paintings of the Renaissance period and that immediately preceding it. He was in negotiations with several owners of such paintings and was in a flurry of communication and travel a propos potential sales.
Mrs. Osmond drank her tea, nibbled at an orange but left the bread untouched and was about to leave the courtyard before the sun became too strong when her mind clicked into operating mode and she remembered where she had heard the name Halpern--it was her husband’s former mistress Madame Merle, recently remarried, once again plotting with Osmond, their intrigues a thing a great flowering of which Isabel could only speculate on while the blood raced to her head precipitously, aware that once again she would have to contend with her husband’s secretive past when what she had hoped for was a future free of its menacing shadow.
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