Hautefeuille reddened still more as he spoke of the Venetian. He guessed what association of ideas had suggested Olivier's question so quickly after having toyed with the ring and after having undoubtedly read the inscription. His friend thought the souvenir was the gift of some Italian. And who could this be if not the Marchesa Andryana? Any one else would have hailed with satisfaction the error that turned his friend's watchful perspicacity in a wrong direction. Hautefeuille, however, was too sensitive not to be pained by a mistake that compromised an irreproachable woman, to whose marriage he had even been a witness. His embarrassment, his crimson cheeks, a slight hesitation in his voice, were only so many signs to Olivier that he was upon the right path. He felt remorse at having yielded to an almost instinctive impulse. He was afraid he had wounded his friend and he wished to ask his pardon. But to ask pardon for an indiscretion is sometimes only to be more indiscreet. All that he could do, all that he did, was to make up a little for the impression his sarcasm upon the day before must have made upon Hautefeuille if he was in love with the Venetian. Navagero's Anglomania served him as a pretext to caricature in a few words a snob of the same order whom he had met in Rome and he then said, in conclusion:-- "I was in a vile temper yesterday, and I must have appeared somewhat prudish in my fit of sepia.--I have often been amused by the motley society one meets in watering-places, and I have felt all the charm of the women from other countries!--I was younger then.--I remember even having been fond of Monte Carlo!--I am curious to see it again. Suppose we dine there to-day? It would amuse Berthe, and I don't think it would bore me." He spoke truly. In such mental crises, purely imaginary, the first moments of relief are accompanied by a strange feeling of light-heartedness, which shows itself in an almost infantile gayety, often as unreasoning as the motives from which it springs. During the rest of the time until the train started for Nice Olivier astonished his wife and friend by the change in his temper and conversation, a change that was inexplicable for them. The _Ora e sempre_ of the ring and its sentimentality; all his recollections of the simplicity, of the naïveté of Italians in love; the opulent beauty that Pierre had suggested in comparing Madame Bonnacorsi to a Veronese,--all gave him the idea that his friend was the lover of an indulgent and willing mistress, one who was both voluptuous and gentle. It pleased him to think of this happy passion. He felt as much satisfaction in contemplating it as he had suffered at the thought of the other possibility. And he believed in all good faith that his anxiety of the night before and of the morning had been solely prompted by his solicitude about Hautefeuille, and that his present content grew out of his reassured friendship.