She regained consciousness and almost at once.  She saw her mother as mad with anxiety as she had just seen her trembling with joy and love.  She again saw Lydia Maitland’s eyes fixed upon them both with an expression too significant now.  And, as she had had the presence of mind to save that guilty mother, she found in her tenderness the strength to smile at her, to lie to her, to blind her forever as to the truth of that hideous scene which had just been enacted in that lobby.

“I was frightened at the sight of my own blood,” said she, “and I believe it is only a small cut....  See!  I can move my hand without pain.”

When the doctor, hastily summoned, had confirmed that no particles of glass had remained in the cuts, the Countess felt so reassured that her gayety returned.  Never had she been in a mood more charming than in the carriage which took them to the Villa Steno.

To a person obliged by proof to condemn another without ceasing to love her, there is no greater sorrow than to perceive the absolute unconsciousness of that other person and her serenity in her fault.  Poor Alba, felt overwhelmed by a sadness greater, more depressing still, and which became materially insupportable, when, toward half-past two, her mother bade her farewell, although the fete at the English embassy did not begin until five o’clock.

“I promised poor Hafner to go to see him to-day.  I know he is bowed down with grief.  I would like to try to arrange all....  I will send back the carriage if you wish to go out awhile.  I have telephoned Lydia to expect me at four o’clock....  She will take me.”

She had, on detailing the employment so natural of her afternoon, eyes too brilliant, a smile too happy.  She looked too youthful in her light toilette.  Her feet trembled with too nervous an impatience.  How could Alba not have felt that she was telling her an untruth?  The undeceived child had the intuition that the visit to Fanny’s father was only a pretext.  It was not the first time that the Countess employed it to free herself from inconvenient surveillance, the act of sending back the carriage, which, in Rome as in Paris, is always the probable sign of clandestine meetings with women of their rank.  It was not the first time that Alba was possessed by suspicion on certain mysterious disappearances of her mother.  That mother did not mistrust that poor Alba—­her Alba, the child so tenderly loved in spite of all—­was suffering at that very moment and on her account the most terrible of temptations....  When the carriage had disappeared the fixed gaze of the young girl was turned upon the pavement, and then she felt arise in her a sudden, instinctive, almost irresistible idea to end the moral suffering by which she was devoured.  It was so simple!....  It was sufficient to end life.  One movement which she could make, one single movement—­she could lean over the balustrade, against which her arm rested, in a certain manner—­so, a little