“When you wish,” replied Countess Steno, and to her daughter, who entered, she said:  “You know the carriage is to come at ten minutes to eleven, and it is now the quarter.  Are you ready?”

“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: