“You are right, Contessina,” said he, “the decrystallization has commenced.  It is a little too soon.”

“Yes, it is too soon,” replied Alba.  “And yet it is too late.  Would you believe that there are times when I ask myself if it would not be my duty to tell her the truth about her marriage, such as I know it, with the story of the weak man, the forced sale, and of the bargaining of Ardea?”

“You will not do it,” said Dorsenne.  “Moreover, why?  This one or another, the man who marries her will only want her money, rest assured.  It is necessary that the millions be paid for here below, it is one of their ransoms....  But I shall cause you to be scolded by your mother, for I am monopolizing you, and I have still two calls to pay this evening.”

“Well, postpone them,” said Alba.  “I beseech you, do not go.”

“I must,” replied Julien.  “It is the last Wednesday of old Duchess Pietrapertosa, and after her grandson’s recent kindness—­”

“She is so ugly,” said Alba, “will you sacrifice me to her?”

“Then there is my compatriot, who goes away tomorrow and of whom I must take leave this evening, Madame de Sauve, with whom you met me at the museum ....  You will not say she is ugly, will you?”

“No,” responded Alba, dreamily, “she is very pretty."....  She had another prayer upon her lips, which she did not formulate.  Then, with a beseeching glance:  “Return, at least.  Promise me that you will return after your two visits.  They will be over in an hour and a half.  It will not be midnight.  You know some do not ever come before one and sometimes two o’clock.  You will return?”

“If possible, yes.  But at any rate, we shall meet to-morrow, at the studio, to see the portrait.”

“Then, adieu,” said the young girl, in a low voice.

CHAPTER X

COMMON MISERY

The Contessina’s disposition was too different from her mother’s for the mother to comprehend that heart, the more contracted in proportion as it was touched, while emotion was synonymous with expansion in the opulent and impulsive Venetian.  That evening she had not even observed Alba’s dreaminess, Dorsenne once gone, and it required that Hafner should call her attention to it.  To the scheming Baron, if the novelist was attentive to the young girl it was certainly with the object of capturing a considerable dowry.  Julien’s income of twenty-five thousand francs meant independence.  The two hundred and fifty thousand francs which Alba would have at her mother’s death was a very large fortune.  So Hafner thought he would deserve the name of “old friend,” by taking Madame Steno aside and saying to her: 

“Do you not think Alba has been a little strange for several days!”

“She has always been so,” replied the Countess.  “Young people are like that nowadays; there is no more youth.”

“Do you not think,” continued the Baron, “that perhaps there is another cause for that sadness—­some interest in some one, for example?”