"What! You don't know her? It is Madame de Carlsberg, the morganatic wife of the Archduke Henry Francis.—You are sure to meet her in Cannes. And you will see for yourself how beautiful and good and sympathetic she is."
"Did she not live in Rome for some time?" continued the young wife.
How her heart beat as she asked the question! The Venetian replied in the most natural tone:—
"Yes, for a couple of winters. She was not on good terms with her husband then, and they lived according to their own guise. Things are a little better now, although—"
And the good creature was discreetly silent.
CHAPTER IX
FRIEND AND MISTRESS—Continued
The sentiment of perfect happiness that Ely experienced when she was convinced, in talking to Pierre, that Olivier had not disclosed anything to his friend did not continue long. She knew her former lover too well not to understand the constant danger threatening her. She knew that he still remembered her, and she realized the intensity of morbid passion of which the unhappy man was capable. It was impossible that he should not feel toward her now as in the past, that he should not judge her in the present as during the time of their liaison, with a savage cruelty allied to a suspicion that had so wounded her. She knew how dearly he loved Hantefeuille. She knew how solicitous, how jealous that friendship was. No, he would not suffer her to possess his beloved companion without a struggle, were it only to save him from her whom he judged so hardly.
Besides her tact, the intuition of the former mistress was not to be deceived. When the man whom she knew to suffer, as from a malady, from a sensuality that was almost ferocious, should learn the truth, his worst, most hideous jealousy would be aroused into action. Had she not counted upon this very thing in the first place when she had nourished a scheme of vengeance that to-day filled her with shame?
All these ideas crowded into her mind immediately Hautefeuille left her. Again, as after his first visit, she accompanied him as far as the threshold of the hothouse, clasping his hand and leading him through the salon plunged in darkness, with a feeling of terror and yet of pride when she felt that the hand of the young man, indifferent to danger, never trembled. She shuddered at the first contact of the cold night air. A last embrace, their lips united in a yearning final kiss, the kiss of farewell,—always heartrending between lovers, for fate is treacherous and misfortune flies swiftly,—a few minutes during which she stood listening to his steps resounding as he walked down the deserted pathways of the garden, and then she returned to her room, returned to find the place, now cold, where her beloved had reposed in her solitary bed. In the sudden melancholy mood caused by separation her intelligence awoke from its vision of happiness and forgetfulness, awoke to a sense of reality. And she was afraid.