“Yes,” said Julien, “it would be very sad; but are you sure that you do not exaggerate the situation?  There is not so much calculation in life.  It is more mediocre and more facile.  Perhaps the Prince and the Baron have a vague project.”

“A vague project?” interrupted Alba, shrugging her shoulders.  “There is never anything vague with a Hafner, you may depend.  What if I were to tell you that I am positive—­do you hear—­positive that it is he who holds between his fingers the largest part of the Prince’s debts, and that he caused the sale by Ancona to obtain the bargain?”

“It is impossible!” exclaimed Dorsenne.  “You saw him yourself yesterday thinking of buying this and that object.”

“Do not make me say any more,” said Alba, passing over her brow and her eyes two or three times her hand, upon which no ring sparkled—­that hand, very supple and white, whose movements betrayed extreme nervousness.  “I have already said too much.  It is not my business, and poor Fanny is only to me a recent friend, although I think her very attractive and affectionate....  When I think that she is on the point of pledging herself for life, and that there is no one, that there can be no one, to cry:  They lie to you!  I am filled with compassion.  That is all.  It is childish!”

It is always painful to observe in a young person the exact perception of the sinister dealings of life, which, once entered into the mind, never allows of the carelessness so natural at the age of twenty.

The impression of premature disenchantment Alba Steno had many times given to Dorsenne, and it had indeed been the principal attraction to the curious observer of the feminine character, who still was struck by the terrible absence of illusion which such a view of the projects of Fanny’s father revealed.  Whence did she know them?  Evidently from Madame Steno herself.  Either the Baron and the Countess had talked of them before the young girl too openly to leave her in any doubt, or she had divined what they did not tell her, through their conversation.  On seeing her thus, with her bitter mouth, her bright eyes, so visibly a prey to the fever of suppressed loathing, Dorsenne again was impressed by the thought of her perfect perspicacity.  It was probable that she had applied the same force of thought to her mother’s conduct.  It seemed to him that on raising, as she was doing, the wick of the silver lamp beneath the large teakettle, that she was glancing sidewise at the terrace, where the end of the Countess’s white robe could be seen through the shadow.  Suddenly the mad thoughts which had so greatly agitated him on the previous day possessed him again, and the plan he had formed of imitating his model, Hamlet, in playing in Madame Steno’s salon the role of the Danish prince before his uncle occurred to him.  Absently, with his customary air of indifference, he continued: 

“Rest assured, Ardea does not lack enemies.  Hafner, too, has plenty of them.  Some one will be found to denounce their plot, if there is a plot, to lovely Fanny.  An anonymous letter is so quickly written.”