she
had once been at home behind the foot-lights. She was apparently well
on in the forties; but her real face was concealed under a coating of
paint, very skillfully laid on, and her soft, regular features made no
disagreeable impression.

"You are still here, my dear?" cried the countess, scarcely attempting
to conceal a feeling of displeasure. "I thought you had long ago felt
bored at your self-chosen part and gone away."

"I have passed an unspeakably pleasurable evening, my dear countess,
and wanted to thank you for it. Since I lost my voice and left the
stage, I scarcely remember to have heard so much good music in so few
hours. Manna in the desert, my dear countess!--manna in the desert! But
how lucky it was that I listened to the concert, as I did, in my dark
box over there! It is true that he, before whom I particularly wished
to avoid appearing, might not have noticed me. Since his new _liaison_
he seems to be blind for everything else, and the many years since we
last met have done their best to make it hard for him to recognize me.
But imagine, countess, that young painter--the same one who got in my
way that night when we discovered the burning picture--strayed by
chance into your bedroom! Fortunately, he hastily retired again. But
it was a bright moonlight night the first time. Who knows whether he
did not recognize me again, especially as the picture in the cabinet
there--"

"Certainly," nodded the countess, "you are right. Who knows?"

She had not heard a word the other had spoken.

"Oh, my honored patroness!" continued the latter, "if I could only tell
you how it infuriated me again to see him--the hard and cruel man who
made my poor daughter's life so wretched--enter the room with such a
proud, arrogant air, and receive homage everywhere; to hear his voice,
and his aggressive speeches that seemed meant to throw down the glove
to the whole company--oh, you cannot tell how I hate him! But has not a
mother a right to hate the enemy of her daughter?--all the more when
this daughter is so foolish as still to love the man who cast her out
of his house, and even begrudged her the consolation of weeping over
her wrongs on the neck of her own child?"

She pressed her handkerchief to her eyes in a theatrical manner, as if
her grief had overpowered her.

The countess gave her a cold look.

"Don't play comedy before me, my dear," she said, sharply. "According
to all that I have heard of your daughter, I