don't imagine she is
inconsolable. What reasons have you for thinking she still loves him?"

"I know her heart, countess. She is too proud to mourn and weep. But
would she not ask her mother to come and live with her, were it not
that then she would be obliged to give up ever hearing any news of
the child? If she only knew what it cost me to be a spy, so that I
can write to her now and then how it fares with her hardhearted
husband--the poor, innocent child! And yet, gracious countess, if I
could ever succeed in tying the broken bond again, in freeing this
ungrateful, inconstant man from this snare of unworthy passion, in
leading him back again to his rightful wife--"

Her voice appeared to be choked with tears. The countess made a
movement of impatience.

"Enough!" she said. "It is late, and I am very tired. Still, it is
true, something must be done. This man's great talent will go to rack
and ruin amid false surroundings and vulgar love affairs, unless some
one brings him back into the right path. Come to me again to-morrow
forenoon, my dear. We will talk further on the subject then. Adieu!"

She nodded to the singer in an absent way. The latter bowed low before
her, and started in haste to leave the room. As she was crossing the
threshold she heard her name called.

"Don't you think me very unbecomingly dressed today, dear Johanna? It
seems to me I appear very old and haggard in this Venetian coiffure.
For that matter, I really ought to have put off the _soiree_
altogether; I could hardly keep on my feet, I had such a headache."

"You have this advantage over us, that even suffering makes you appear
more beautiful. From my place in my invisible box, I caught words that
would prove to you how great injustice you do yourself."

"Flatterer!" laughed the countess, bitterly. "Go away I--do go away! At
all events you can't contradict the evidence of my own eyes."

After the singer had gone, Nelida remained for a time standing on the
same spot where the former had taken leave of her. She murmured a few
words in her mother tongue, and then said in German:

"He wants to do penance, does he? He shall!--he shall!--he shall!"

She stepped in front of the mirror above the fireplace, before which a
lamp, nearly out, burned with a weak, red flame. The candles on the
piano were burned down almost to the socket. In this dim light her
cheeks looked still more wan, her eyes more sunken, and the scowl on
her forehead as if it