At the word "mother" the old lady paused, and I saw her blue eyes fixed on a distant sail on the lake, with a sad, almost yearning look in them.
But in a moment it was gone. She turned to us, smiling.
"You must take a glass of Chartreuse," she said, filling the tiny glasses, "it is so good for you. It is a perfect elixir!"
We drank the liqueur more to please her than anything else; then Dolores rose. I have never seen such a look of pain on her sweet face as was there then. God send I never see such again!
"No doubt, Madame la Comtesse," she began, "you wish to speak to my husband alone?"
The old lady glanced up at her for a few moments without speaking, there was a slightly puzzled look in her kind blue eyes; then, in a second, this look was gone, and one of deep solicitude and affection took its place.
It was as if some expression or passing glance on my dear wife's face had touched a chord somewhere in her nature, perhaps long forgotten.
She put out her slender white hand and drew Dolores down beside her on to the bench on which she sat; then she put her arm round her and pressed her to her, as one fondles a child.
"My dear," she said, "between a husband and his wife there should be no secret. No secret of mine shall divide you two. What I tell to one, I tell to both. What does it matter? For myself, I shall soon be gone; for the others, what harm can it bring them?"
We sat in silence, she with her arm round Dolores, her eyes fixed on the blue lake, a tear trembling in each, and she spoke to us as one whose thoughts were far away among the people and the scenes she described. I sat enthralled by every word she uttered.