Living like a cat shut into a lion's cage, the young wife dreaded at
all hours the claws of the master which ever threatened her. She knew
that in order to be happy she must forget the past and think only of
the future; but there were days, consecrated to the memory of some
vanished joy, when she deliberately made it a crime to put on the gown
she had worn on the day she had seen her lover for the first time.
"I am not guilty," she said, "but if I seem guilty to the count it is
as if I were so. Perhaps I am! The Holy Virgin conceived without--"
She stopped. During this moment when her thoughts were misty and her
soul floated in a region of fantasy her naivete made her attribute to
that last look with which her lover transfixed her the occult power of
the visitation of the angel to the Mother of her Lord. This
supposition, worthy of the days of innocence to which her reverie had
carried her back, vanished before the memory of a conjugal scene more
odious than death. The poor countess could have no real doubt as to
the legitimacy of the child that stirred in her womb.
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