"You can see," replied the young girl, displaying her pearl-gray gloves, which she was just buttoning, while on her head a large hat of black tulle made a dark and transparent aureole around her fair head. Her delicate bust was displayed to advantage in the corsage Maitland had chosen for her portrait, a sort of cuirass of a dark-blue material, finished at the neck and wrists with bands of velvet of a darker shade. The fine lines of cuffs and a collar gave to that pure face a grace of youth younger than her age.
She had evidently come at her mother's call, with the haste and the smile of that age. Then, to see Gorka's expression and the feverish brilliance of the Countess's eyes had given her what she called, in an odd but very appropriate way, the sensation of "a needle in the heart," of a sharp, fine point, which entered her breast to the left. She had slept a sleep so profound, after the soiree of the day before, on which she had thought she perceived in her mother's attitude between the Polish count and the American painter a proof of certain innocence.
She admired her mother so much, she thought her so intelligent, so beautiful, so good, that to doubt her was a thought not to be borne! There were times when she doubted her. A terrible conversation about the Countess, overheard in a ballroom, a conversation between two men, who did not know Alba to be behind them, had formed the principal part of the doubt, which, by turns, had increased and diminished, which had abandoned and tortured her, according to the signs, as little decisive as Madame Steno's tranquillity of the preceding day or her confusion that morning. It was only an impression, very rapid, instantaneous, the prick of a needle, which merely leaves after it a drop of blood, and yet she had a smile with which to say to Boleslas:
"How did Maud rest? How is she this morning? And my little friend Luc?"
"They are very well," replied Gorka. The last stage of his fury, suddenly arrested by the presence of the young girl, was manifested, but only to the Countess, by the simple phrase to which his eyes and his voice lent an extreme bitterness: "I found them as I left them…. Ah! They love me dearly…. I leave you to Peppino, Countess," added he, walking toward the door. "Mademoiselle, I will bear your love to Maud." ….He had regained all the courtesy which a long line of savage 'grands seigneurs', but 'grands seigneurs' nevertheless, had instilled in him. If his bow to Madame Steno was very ceremonious, he put a special grace in the low bow with which he took leave of the Contessina. It was merely a trifle, but the Countess was keen enough to perceive it. She was touched by it, she whom despair, fury, and threats had found so impassive. For an instant she was vaguely humiliated by the success which she had gained over the man whom she would, voluntarily, five minutes before, have had cast out of doors by her servants. She was silent, oblivious even of her daughter's presence, until the latter recalled her to herself by saying:
"Shall I put on my veil and fetch my parasol?"
"You can join me in the office, whither I am going to talk with Ardea," replied her mother; adding, "I shall perhaps have some news to tell you in the carriage which will give you pleasure!"…. She had again her bright smile, and she did not mistrust while she resumed her conversation with Peppino that poor Alba, on reentering her chamber, wiped from her pale cheeks two large tears, and that she opened, to re-read it, the infamous anonymous letter received the day before. She knew by heart all the perfidious phrases. Must it not have been that the mind which had composed them was blinded by vengeance to such a degree that it had no scruples about laying before the innocent child a denunciation which ran thus:
"A true friend of Mademoiselle Steno warns her that she is compromised, more than a marriageable young girl should be, in playing, with regard to M. Maitland the role she has already played with regard to M. Goyka. There are conditions of blindness so voluntary that they become complicity."
Those words, enigmatical to any one else, but to the Contessina horribly clear, had been, like the letters of which Boleslas had told Dorsenne, cut from a journal and pasted on a sheet of paper. How had Alba trembled on reading that note for the first time, with an emotion increased by the horror of feeling hovering over her and her mother a hatred so relentless! Later in the day how much had the words exchanged with Dorsenne comforted her, and how reassured had she been by the Countess's imperturbability on the entrance of Boleslas Gorka! Fragile peace, which had vanished when she saw her mother and the husband of her best friend face to face, with traces in their eyes, in their gestures, upon their countenances, of an angry scene! The thought "Why were they thus! What had they said?" again occurred to her to sadden her. Suddenly she crushed in her hand with violence the anonymous letter, which gave a concrete form to her sorrow and her suspicion, and, lighting a taper, she held it to the paper, which the flames soon reduced to ashes. She ran her fingers through the debris until there was very little left, and then, opening the window, she cast it to the winds.
She looked at her glove after doing this—her glove, a few moments before, of so delicate a gray, now stained by the smoky dust. It was symbolical of the stain which the letter, even when destroyed, had left upon her mind. The gloves, too, inspired her with horror. She hastily drew them off, and, when she descended to rejoin Madame Steno, it was not any more possible to perceive on those hands, freshly gloved, the traces of that tragical childishness, than it was possible to discern, beneath the large veil which she had tied over her hat, the traces of tears. She found the mother for whom she was suffering so much, wearing, too, a large sun-hat, but a white one with a white veil, beneath which could be seen her fair hair, her sparkling blue eyes and pink-and-white complexion; her form was enveloped in a gown of a material and cut more youthful than her daughter's, while, radiant with delight, she said to Peppino Ardea: