any desire to study character.

Dorsenne said of her, with more justness than he thought: "Madame
Boleslas Gorka is married to a man who has never been presented to her,"
meaning by that, that first of all she had no idea of her husband's
character, and then of the treason of which she was the victim. However,
the novelist was not altogether right. Boleslas's infidelity was of too
long standing for the woman passionately, religiously loyal, who was his
wife, not to have suffered by it. But there was an abyss between such
sufferings and the intuition of a determined fact such as that which
Lydia had just mentioned, and such a suspicion was so far from Maud's
thoughts that her companion's words only aroused in her astonishment at
the mysterious danger of which Lydia's troubles was a proof more eloquent
still than her words.

"Your brother? My husband?" she said. "I do not understand you."

"Naturally," replied Lydia, "he has hidden all from you, as Florent hid
all from me. Well! They are going to fight a duel, and to-morrow
morning.... Do not tremble, in your turn," she continued, twining her
arms around Maud Gorka. "We shall be two to prevent the terrible affair,
and we shall prevent it."

"A duel? To-morrow morning?" repeated Maud, in affright. "Boleslas fights
to-morrow with your brother? No, it is impossible. Who told you so? How
do you know it?"

"I read the proof of it with my eyes," replied Lydia. "I read Florent's
will. I read the letter which he prepared for Maitland and for me in case
of accident...."

"Should I be in the state in which you see me if it were not true?"

"Oh, I believe you!" cried Maud, pressing her hands to her eyelids, as if
to shut out a horrible sight. "But where can they be seen? Boleslas has
been here scarcely any of the time for two days. What is there between
them? What have they said to one another? One does not risk one's life
for nothing when he has, like Boleslas, a wife and a son. Answer me, I
conjure you. Tell me all. I desire to know all. What is there at the
bottom of this duel?"

"What could there be but a woman?" interrupted Lydia, who put into the
two last words more savage scorn than if she had publicly spit in
Caterina Steno's face. But that fresh access of anger fell before the
surprise caused her by Madame Gorka's reply.

"What woman? I understand you still less than I did just now."

"When we are at home I will speak,".... replied Lydia, after having
looked at