The Countess gravely shook her head. "That excuse does not satisfy me; I can understand that it is easier to speak of certain things to a father than to a mother, but don't you know that never since your boyhood have I tried to keep you in leading-strings? When did I ever play the spy upon your actions, or meddle with what did not concern a mother?"
"Never, mother dear, so long as I was well and happy," he assented, involuntarily adopting a tone of tender raillery, "but, if I happened to hang my head,--oh, then, you were sometimes very indiscreet."
"A son who is ill or unhappy is always about two years old for his mother," she said. "Come now, confess; I am an old woman, you can speak out before me. I am convinced that your exaggerated conscientiousness is leading you to magnify some very commonplace affair;--an old love scrape is perhaps casting a shadow over your betrothal...."
"You are mistaken, mamma, there is nothing to trouble me in my past; it is all as if it had never been."
"Well, then, what troubles you?"
For a moment he did not speak, then he said in a low tone rather hastily, "A wretched nervousness--sorry fancies! Can you believe it?--just before you came in, I saw plainly, as plainly as I see you, the laughing blind woman come towards me!"
"Are you beginning to suffer from the Lodrin hallucinations?" the Countess exclaimed.
The 'Lodrin hallucinations,'--she uttered the words carelessly, without reflection. His soul drank them in thirstily.
"Apparently, mamma, but I shall get rid of them, I shall certainly get rid of them," he replied in a clear, joyous voice.
"And what other fancies did your nerves suggest?" she asked, scrutinizing his face anxiously.