, imaginative.
Boleslas Gorka returned? At the moment when Madame Steno is mad over
Maitland--for she is mad! The night before last, at her house at dinner,
she looked at him--it was scandalous. Gorka had a presentiment of it this
winter. When the American attempted to take Alba's portrait the first
time, the Pole put a stop to it. It was fine for Montfanon to talk of
division between these two men. When Boleslas left here, Maitland and the
Countess were barely acquainted and now----If he has returned it is
because he has discovered that he has a rival. Some one has warned
him--an enemy of the Countess, a confrere of Maitland. Such pieces of
infamy occur among good friends. If Gorka, who is a shot like Casal,
kills Maitland in a duel, it will make one deceiver less. If he avenges
himself upon his mistress for that treason, it would be a matter of
indifference to me, for Catherine Steno is a great rogue.... But my
little friend, my poor, charming Alba, what would become of her if there
should be a scandal, bloodshed, perhaps, on account of her mother's
folly? Gorka returned? And he did not write it to me, to me who have
received several letters from him since he went away; to me, whom he
selected last autumn as the confidant of his jealousies, under the
pretext that I knew women, and, with the vain hope of inspiring me....
His silence and return no longer seem like a romance; they savor rather
of a drama, and with a Slav, as much a Slav as he is, one may expect
anything. I know not what to think of it, for he will be at the Palais
Castagna. Poor, charming Alba!"

The monologue did not differ much from a monologue uttered under similar
circumstances by any young man interested in a young girl whose mother
does not conduct herself becomingly. It was a touching situation, but a
very common one, and there was no necessity for the author to come to
Rome to study it, one entire winter and spring. If that interest went
beyond a study, Dorsenne possessed a very simple means of preventing his
little friend, as he said, from being rendered unhappy by the conduct of
that mother whom age did not conquer. Why not propose for her hand? He
had inherited a fortune, and his success as an author had augmented it.
For, since the first book which had established his reputation, the
'Etudes de Femmes,' published in 1879, not a single one of the fifteen
novels or selections from novels had remained unnoticed. His personal
celebrity could, str