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:

"Shall I put on my veil and fetch my parasol?"

"You can join me in the office, whither I am going to talk with Ardea,"
replied her mother; adding, "I shall perhaps have some news to tell you
in the carriage which will give you pleasure!".... She had again
her bright smile, and she did not mistrust while she resumed her
conversation with Peppino that poor Alba, on reentering her chamber,
wiped from her pale cheeks two large tears, and that she opened, to
re-read it, the infamous anonymous letter received the day before. She
knew by heart all the perfidious phrases. Must it not have been that the
mind which had composed them was blinded by vengeance to such a degree
that it had no scruples about laying before the innocent child a
denunciation which ran thus:

"A true friend of Mademoiselle Steno warns her that she is
compromised, more than a marriageable young girl should be, in
playing, with regard to M. Maitland the role she has already played
with regard to M. Goyka. There are conditions of blindness so
voluntary that they become complicity."

Those words, enigmatical to any one else, but to the Contessina horribly
clear, had been, like the letters of which Boleslas had told Dorsenne,
cut from a journal and pasted on a sheet of paper. How had Alba trembled
on reading that note for the first time, with an emotion increased
by the horror of feeling hovering over her and her mother a hatred
so relentless! Later in the day how much had the words exchanged with
Dorsenne comforted her, and how reassured had she been by the Countess's
imperturbability on the entrance of Boleslas Gorka! Fragile peace, which
had vanished when she saw her m