“One could very well imagine what it would be never to have been born,” interrupted.  Alba Steno.

She uttered the sentence in so peculiar a manner that the discussion begun by Hafner was nipped in the bud.

The words produced their effect upon the chatter of the idlers who only partly believed in the ideas they put forth.  Although there is always a paradox in condemning life amid a scene of luxury when one is not more than twenty, the Contessina was evidently sincere.  Whence came that sincerity?  From what corner of her youthful heart, wounded almost to death?  Dorsenne was the only person who asked himself the question, for the conversation turned at once, Lydia Maitland having touched with her fan the sleeve of Alba, who was two seats from her, to ask her this question with an irony as charming, after the young girl’s words, as it was involuntary: 

“It is silk muslin, is it not?”

“Yes,” replied the Contessina, who rose and leaned over, to offer to the curious gaze of her pretty neighbor her arm, which gleamed frail, nervous, and softly fair through the transparent red material, with a bow of ribbon of the same color tied at her slender shoulder and her graceful wrist, while Ardea, by the side of Fanny, could be heard saying to the daughter of Baron Justus, more beautiful than ever that evening, in her pallor slightly tinged with pink by some secret agitation: 

“You visited my palace yesterday, Mademoiselle?”

“No,” she replied.

“Ask her why not, Prince,” said Hafner.

“Father!” cried Fanny, with a supplication in her black eyes which Ardea had the delicacy to obey, as he resumed: 

“It is a pity.  Everything there is very ordinary.  But you would have been interested in the chapel.  Indeed, I regret that the most, those objects before which my ancestors have prayed so long and which end by being listed in a catalogue....  They even took the reliquary from me, because it was by Ugolina da Siena.  I will buy it back as soon as I can.  Your father applauds my courage.  I could not part from those objects without real sorrow.”

“But it is the feeling she has for the entire palace,” said the Baron.

“Father!” again implored Fanny.

“Come, compose yourself, I will not betray you,” said Hafner, while Alba, taking advantage of having risen, left the group.  She walked toward a table at the other extremity of the room, set in the style of an English table, with tea and iced drinks, saying to Julien, who followed her: 

“Shall I prepare your brandy and soda, Dorsenne?”

“What ails you, Contessina?” asked the young man, in a whisper, when they were alone near the plateau of crystal and the collection of silver, which gleamed so brightly in the dimly lighted part of the room.

“Yes,” he persisted, “what ails you?  Are you still vexed with me?”

“With you?” said she.  “I have never been.  Why should I be?” she repeated.  “You have done nothing to me.”