me unknown to his wife?"

"That is indeed strange," replied Maitland's brother-in-law, adding
simply, after a silence: "Are you certain of it?"

"As certain as that we are here," said Dorsenne. "One of my friends,
Marquis de Montfanon, met him this morning."

A fresh silence ensued between the two, during which Julien felt that the
arm upon which he rested trembled. Then they joined the party, while
Florent said aloud: "It is an excellent piece of painting, which has,
unfortunately, been revarnished too much."

"May I have done right!" thought Julien. "He understood me."

CHAPTER III

BOLESLAS GORKA

Hardly ten minutes had passed since Dorsenne had spoken as he had to
Florent Chapron, and already the imprudent novelist began to wonder
whether it would not have been wiser not to interfere in any way in an
adventure in which his intervention was of the least importance.

The apprehension of an immediate drama which had possessed him, for the
first time, after the conversation with Montfanon, for the second time,
in a stronger manner, by proving the ignorance of Madame Gorka on the
subject of the husband's return--that frightful and irresistible
evocation in a clandestine chamber, suddenly deluged with blood, was
banished by the simplest event. The six visitors exchanged their last
impressions on the melancholy and magnificence of the Castagna
apartments, and they ended by descending the grand staircase with the
pillars, through the windows of which staircase smiled beneath the
scorching sun the small garden which Dorsenne had compared to a face. The
young man walked a little in advance, beside Alba Steno, whom he now
tried, but in vain, to cheer. Suddenly, at the last turn of the broad
steps which tempered the decline gradually, her face brightened with
surprise and pleasure. She uttered a slight cry and said: "There is my
mother!" And Julien saw the Madame Steno, whom he had seen, in an access
of almost delirious anxiety, surprised, assassinated by a betrayed lover.
She was standing upon the gray and black mosaic of the peristyle, dressed
in the most charming morning toilette. Her golden hair was gathered up
under a large hat of flowers, over which was a white veil; her hand toyed
with the silver handle of a white parasol, and in the reflection of that
whiteness, with her clear, fair complexion, with her lovely blue eyes in
which sparkled passion and intelligence, with her faultless teeth which
gleamed whe