The storm was averted for this time, but her confidence, her joyous sense of security, was gone forever.  The scene left her with a nervous restlessness which gradually increased to morbid fear.  She was haunted by the idea, that Wilhelm had some plan for deserting her.  She could not get rid of the thought—­it assumed the aspect of a possession.  She changed color as she did regularly two or three times in the course of the morning—­she opened the door of his room unexpectedly and did not see him at the writing table, because, maybe, he had gone out on to the balcony for a moment, to rest from his work and cool his heated brow.  Then she would search the house distractedly till she found him, and breathed again.  In the night, she would start up, and feel about her hurriedly, to make sure that Wilhelm was there.  She would not let him go a step out of the house without her.  She even accompanied him to the National Library, and while he read or made notes, she sat beside him apparently occupied with a book, but in reality never taking her eye off him.  She made no more visits except to the houses where she could take Wilhelm with her.  She had curious jealous fancies, examining, for instance, with great care every letter that came for him, lest the address should be in a feminine hand.  Her desire to be forever proving to herself that he was there, that he still belonged to her, took the form of an insatiable craving for love, admitting, so to speak, of no pauses for digestion.  She was a beautiful, greedy werewolf, knowing neither consideration nor restraint, her vampire mouth forever draining the warm life-blood.

“She is crazy,” said Anne to one of Queen Isabella’s ladies who had been calling on Pilar, and remarked afterward to the maid that she found the countess strangely altered.  Isabel, the cook with the red nose and alcoholic, watery eyes, passed whole mornings with her mistress laying the cards, till she forgot all about lunch.  The father confessor, too, became an ever more frequent guest in the house of his fashionable parishioner, and received in exchange for his mild and discreet exhortations, donations for his church, gifts for his poor, and requests for masses and prayers.  But in none of these distractions did Pilar find the peace she sought, and in her terror of heart she telegraphed one day to her mother to come at once to Paris and stay with her for a time.  Don Pablo had taken the message to the office, and talked about it afterward downstairs.  Auguste hurried to retail the news to Wilhelm, who had no difficulty in understanding the motive.  In the first moment he thought he was glad of the approaching arrival of the Marquise de Henares.  For, distasteful as the idea might be that the mother should become a witness of the daughter’s questionable relations, he hoped that her presence would have a quieting effect on Pilar, and help to bring her to reason.  But, on second thoughts, he was seized with afresh anxiety.  He knew that Pilar’s was the stronger spirit of the two, that she had a great influence over her mother, and could induce her to adopt any opinion or feelings she might choose.  What if the marquise ranged herself on her daughter’s side?  Then, instead of one, he would have two women against him, and his struggle for freedom, in which he had already succumbed to one of them, would be utterly hopeless.