You will not say she is ugly, will you?"

"No," responded Alba, dreamily, "she is very pretty.".... She had
another prayer upon her lips, which she did not formulate. Then, with
a beseeching glance: "Return, at least. Promise me that you will return
after your two visits. They will be over in an hour and a half. It will
not be midnight. You know some do not ever come before one and sometimes
two o'clock. You will return?"

"If possible, yes. But at any rate, we shall meet to-morrow, at the
studio, to see the portrait."

"Then, adieu," said the young girl, in a low voice.

CHAPTER X. COMMON MISERY

The Contessina's disposition was too different from her mother's for the
mother to comprehend that heart, the more contracted in proportion as it
was touched, while emotion was synonymous with expansion in the opulent
and impulsive Venetian. That evening she had not even observed Alba's
dreaminess, Dorsenne once gone, and it required that Hafner should
call her attention to it. To the scheming Baron, if the novelist
was attentive to the young girl it was certainly with the object of
capturing a considerable dowry. Julien's income of twenty-five thousand
francs meant independence. The two hundred and fifty thousand francs
which Alba would have at her mother's death was a very large fortune.
So Hafner thought he would deserve the name of "old friend," by taking
Madame Steno aside and saying to her:

"Do you not think Alba has been a little strange for several days!"

"She has always been so," replied the Countess. "Young people are like
that nowadays; there is no more youth."

"Do you not think," continued the Baron, "that perhaps there is another
cause for that sadness--some interest in some one, for example?"

"Alba?" exclaimed the mother. "For whom?"

"For Dorsenne," returned Hafner, lowering his voice; "he just left five
minutes ago, and you see she is no longer interested in anything nor in
any one."

"Ah, I should be very much pleased," said Madame Steno, laughing. "He is
a handsome fellow; he has talent, fortune. He is the grand-nephew of a
hero, which is equivalent to nobility, in my opinion. But Alba has
no thought of it, I assure you. She would have told me; she tells me
everything. We are two friends, almost two comrades, and she knows
I shall leave her perfectly free to choose.... No, my old friend, I
understand my daughter. Neither Dorsenne nor any one else interests her,
unfortunately. I sometime