faithful and noble Maud experienced at once a sense of relief and of
pain--of relief, because she was no longer exposed to the danger of an
explanation with Alba; of pain, because it was so bitter a thought for
her that she could never justify her heart to her friend, could never aid
her in emerging from the difficulties of her life, could, finally, never
love her openly as she had loved her secretly. She said to herself as
she saw the city disappear in the night with its curves and its lights:

"If she thinks badly of me, may she divine nothing! Who will now prevent
her from yielding herself up to her sentiment for that dangerous and
perfidious Dorsenne? Who will console her when she is sad? Who will
defend her against her mother? I was perhaps wrong in writing to the
woman, as I did, the letter, which might have been delivered to her in
her daughter's presence.... Ah, poor little soul!.... May God watch
over her!"

She turned, then, toward her son, whose hair she stroked, as if to
exorcise, by the evidence of present duty, the nostalgia which possessed
her at the thought of an affection sacrificed forever. Hers was a nature
too active, too habituated to the British virtue of self-control to
submit to the languor of vain emotions.

The two persons of whom her friendship, now impotent, had thought, were,
for various reasons, the two fatal instruments of the fate of the "poor
little soul," and the vague remorse which Maud herself felt with regard
to the terrible note sent to Madame Steno in the presence of the young
girl, was only too true. When the servant had given that letter to the
Countess, saying that Madame Gorka excused herself on account of
indisposition, Alba Steno's first impulse had been to enter her friend's
room.