She had, on detailing the employment so natural of her afternoon, eyes
too brilliant, a smile too happy. She looked too youthful in her light
toilette. Her feet trembled with too nervous an impatience. How could
Alba not have felt that she was telling her an untruth? The undeceived
child had the intuition that the visit to Fanny's father was only a
pretext. It was not the first time that the Countess employed it to
free herself from inconvenient surveillance, the act of sending back the
carriage, which, in Rome as in Paris, is always the probable sign of
clandestine meetings with women of their rank. It was not the first time
that Alba was possessed by suspicion on certain mysterious disappearances
of her mother. That mother did not mistrust that poor Alba--her Alba,
the child so tenderly loved in spite of all--was suffering at that very
moment and on her account the most terrible of temptations.... When the
carriage had disappeared the fixed gaze of the young girl was turned upon
the pavement, and then she felt arise in her a sudden, instinctive,
almost irresistible idea to end the moral suffering by which she was
devoured. It was so simple!.... It was sufficient to end life. One
movement which she could make, one single movement--she could lean over
the balustrade, against which her arm rested, in a certain manner--so,
a little more forward, a little more--and that suffering would be
terminated. Yes, it would be so very simple. She saw herself lying upon
the pavement, her limbs broken, her head crushed, dead--dead--freed! She
leaned forward and was about to leap, when her eyes fell upon a person
who was walking below, the sight of whom suddenly aroused her from the
folly, the strange charm of which had just laid hold so powerfully upon
her. She drew back. She rubbed her eyes with her hands, and she, who
was accustomed to mystical enthusiasm, said aloud:

"My God! You send him to me! I am saved." And she summoned the footman
to tell him that if M. Dorsenne asked for her, he should be shown into