How happy all three will be!...

Hafner has aimed at it this long time! I remember how, in 1880, after his suit, he came to see me in Venice--you and Fanny played on the balcony of the palace--he questioned me about the Quirinal, the Vatican and society....

Then he concluded, pointing to his daughter, 'I shall make a Roman princess of the little one!" The 'dogaresse' was so delighted at the thought of the success of her negotiations, so delighted, too, to go, as she was going, to Maitland's studio, behind her two English cobs, which trotted so briskly, that she did not see on the sidewalk Boleslas Gorka, who watched her pass.
Alba was so troubled by that fresh proof of her mother's lack of conscience that she did not notice Maud's husband either.

Baron Hafner's and Prince d'Ardea's manner toward Fanny had inspired her the day before with a dolorous analogy between the atmosphere of falsehood in which that poor girl lived and the atmosphere in which she at times thought she herself lived.

That analogy again possessed her, and she again felt the "needle in the heart" as she recalled what she had heard before from the Countess of the intrigue by which Baron Justus Hafner had, indeed, ensnared his future son-in-law.