better than any one else to be false. But was it not the surest means of
exempting Madame Steno from connection with the affair? Why had he seen
Alba's beautiful eyes veiled with a sadness inexplicable, as if he had
just given her another blow? He did not know that since the day on which
the word insanity had been uttered before her relative to Maud's husband,
the Contessina was the victim of a reasoning as simple as irrefutable.

"If Boleslas be mad, as they say," said Alba, "why does Maud, whom I know
to be so just and who loves me so dearly, attribute to my mother the
responsibility of this duel, to the point of breaking with me thus, and
of leaving without a line of explanation?.... No.... There is something
else.".... The nature of the "something else" the young girl
comprehended, on recalling her mother's face during the perusal of Maud's
letter. During the ten days following that scene, she saw constantly
before her that face, and the fear imprinted upon those features
ordinarily so calm, so haughty! Ah, poor little soul, indeed, who could
not succeed in banishing this fixed idea "My mother is not a good woman."

Idea! So much the more terrible, as Alba had no longer the ignorance of
a young girl, if she had the innocence. Accustomed to the conversations,
at times very bold, of the Countess's salon, enlightened by the reading
of novels chanced upon, the words lover and mistress had for her a
signification of physical intimacy such that it was an almost intolerable
torture for her to associate them with the relations of her mother, first
toward Gorka, then toward Maitland. That torture she had undergone
during the entire dinner, at the conclusion of which Dorsenne essayed to
chat gayly with her. She sat beside the painter, and the man's very
breath, his gestures, the sound of his voice, his manner of eating and of
drinking, the knowledge of his very proximity, had caused her such keen
suffering that it was impossible for her to take anything but large