ace, 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 contracted as if b