"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 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 _soirée_ 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."