her that face, and the fear imprinted upon those features
ordinarily so calm, so haughty! Ah, poor little soul, indeed, who could
not succeed in banishing this fixed idea "My mother is not a good woman."

Idea! So much the more terrible, as Alba had no longer the ignorance of a
young girl, if she had the innocence. Accustomed to the conversations, at
times very bold, of the Countess's salon, enlightened by the reading of
novels chanced upon, the words lover and mistress had for her a
signification of physical intimacy such that it was an almost intolerable
torture for her to associate them with the relations of her mother, first
toward Gorka, then toward Maitland. That torture she had undergone during
the entire dinner, at the conclusion of which Dorsenne essayed to chat
gayly with her. She sat beside the painter, and the man's very breath,
his gestures, the sound of his voice, his manner of eating and of
drinking, the knowledge of his very proximity, had caused her such keen
suffering that it was impossible for her to take anything but large
glasses of iced water. Several times during that dinner, prolonged amid
the sparkle of magnificent silver and Venetian crystal, amid the perfume
of flowers and the gleam of jewels, she had seen Maitland's eyes fixed
upon the Countess with an expression which almost caused her to cry out,
so clearly did her instinct divine its impassioned sensuality, and once
she thought she saw her mother respond to it.

She felt with appalling clearness that which before she had uncertainly
experienced, the immodest character of that mother's beauty. With the
pearls in her fair hair, with neck and arms bare in a corsage the
delicate green tint of which showed to advantage the incomparable
splendor of her skin, with her dewy lips, with her voluptuous eyes shaded
by their long lashes, the dogaresse looked in the centre of that table
like an empress and like a courtesan. She resembled the Caterina Cornaro,
the gallant queen of the island of Cypress, painted by Titian, and whose
name she worthily bore. For years Alba had been so proud of the ray of
seduction cast forth by the Countess, so proud of those statuesque arms,
of the superb carriage, of the face which defied the passage of time, of
the bloom of opulent life the glorious creature displayed. During that
dinner she was almost ashamed of it.

She had been pained to see Madame Maitland seated a few paces farther on,
with brow and lips contracte