the sense of secret terror did not check every impulse of her innocent
gaiety. The memory of the look, of the inflections of voice with which
the count accompanied his words, still froze her blood, and silenced
her sufferings, as she leaned over that sleeping head, and strove to
see some sign of a pity she had vainly sought there when awake.

The child, threatened with death before its life began, made so
vigorous a movement that she cried aloud, in a voice that seemed like
a sigh, "Poor babe!"

She said no more; there are ideas that a mother cannot bear. Incapable
of reasoning at this moment, the countess was almost choked with the
intensity of a suffering as yet unknown to her. Two tears, escaping
from her eyes, rolled slowly down her cheeks, and traced two shining
lines, remaining suspended at the bottom of that white face, like
dewdrops on a lily. What learned man would take upon himself to say
that the child unborn is on some neutral ground, where the emotions of
its mother do not penetrate during those hours when soul clasps body
and communicates its impressions, when thought permeates blood with
healing balm or poisonous fluids? The terror that shakes the tree, will
it not hurt the fruit? Those words, "Poor babe!" were they dictated by
a vision of the future? The shuddering of this mother was violent; her
look piercing.

The bloody answer given by the count at the banquet was a link
mysteriously connecting the past with this premature confinement. That
odious suspicion, thus publicly expressed, had cast into the memories
of the countess a dread which echoed to the future. Since that fatal
gala, she had driven from her mind, with as much fear as another woman
would have found pleasure in evoking them, a thousand scattered scenes