," said Florent,
"my brother-in-law."

"Well," replied Madame Gorka to Hafner with her habitual good-nature,
"there are at least two of these coffers that I like and wish to have. I
said it in so loud a tone that it is not worth the trouble of hoping that
your Cavalier Fossati does not know it, if he really has that mode of
espionage in practice. But forty or fifty pounds more make no
difference--nor forty thousand even."

"Baron Hafner will warn you that your tone is not low enough," laughed
Alba Steno, "and he will add his great phrase: 'You will never be
diplomatic.' But," added the girl, turning toward Dorsenne, having drawn
back from silent Lydia Maitland, and arranging to fall behind with the
young man, "I am about to employ a little diplomacy in order to find out
whether you have any trouble." And here her mobile face changed its
expression, looking into Julien's with genuine anxiety. "Yes," said she,
"I have never seen you so preoccupied as you seem to be this morning. Do
you not feel well? Have you received ill news from Paris? What ails you?"

"I preoccupied?" replied Dorsenne. "You are mistaken. There is absolutely
nothing, I assure you." It was impossible to lie with more apparent
awkwardness, and if any one merited the scorn of Baron Hafner, it was he.
Hardly had Madame Gorka spoken, when he had, with the rapidity of men of
vivid imagination, seen Countess Steno and Maitland surprised by Gorka,
at that very moment, in some place of rendezvous, and that surprise
followed by a challenge, perhaps an immediate murder. And, as Alba
continued to laugh merrily, his presentiment of her sad fate became so
vivid that his face actually clouded over. He felt impelled to ascertain,
when she questioned him, how great a friendship she bore him. But his
effort to hide his emotion rendered his voice so harsh that the young
girl resumed:

"I have vexed you by my questioning?"

"Not the least in the world," he replied, without being able to find a
word of friendship. He felt at that moment incapable of talking, as they
usually did, in that tone of familiarity, partly mocking, partly
sentimental, and he added: "I simply think this exposition somewhat
melancholy, that is all." And, with a smile, "But we shall lose the
opportunity of having it shown us by our incomparable cicerone," and he
obliged her, by quickening her pace, to rejoin the group piloted by
Hafner through the magnificence of the almost deserted apartment.