r! A thousand details recurred to her which at
the time she had not understood; the sails of the two lovers in the
gondola, which she had not even thought of suspecting; a visit which
Boleslas had made to Piove and from which he only returned the following
day, giving as a pretext a missed train; words uttered aside on the
balcony of the Palais Steno at night, while she talked with Alba. Yes, it
was at Venice that their adultery began, before her who had divined
nothing, her whose heart was filled with inconsolable regret for her lost
darling! Ah, how could he? she moaned again, and the visions multiplied.

In her mind were then opened all the windows which Gorka's perfidity and
the Countess's as well, had sealed with such care. She saw again the
months which followed their return to Rome, and that mode of life so
convenient for both. How often had she walked out with Alba, thus freeing
the mother and the husband from the only surveillance annoying to them.
What did the lovers do during those hours? How many times on returning to
the Palazzetto Doria had she found Catherine Steno in the library, seated
on the divan beside Boleslas, and she had not mistrusted that the woman
had come, during her absence, to embrace that man, to talk to him of
love, to give herself to him, without doubt, with the charm of villainy
and of danger! She remembered the episode of their meeting at Bayreuth
the previous summer, when she went to England alone with her son, and
when her husband undertook to conduct Alba and the Countess from Rome to
Bavaria. They had all met at Nuremberg. The apartments of the hotel in
which the meeting took place became again very vivid in Maud's memory,
with Madame Steno's bedroom adjoining that of Boleslas's.

The vision of their caresses, enjoyed in the liberty of the night, while
innocent Alba slept near by, and when she rolled away in a carriage with
little Luc, drew from her this cry once more: "Ah, how could he!".... And
immediately that vision awoke in her the remembrance of her husband's
recent return. She saw him traversing Europe on the receipt of an
anonymous letter, to reach that woman's side twenty-four hours sooner.
What a proof of passion was the frenzy which had not allowed him any
longer to bear doubt and absence!.... Did he love the mistress who did
not even love him, since she had deceived him with Maitland? And he was
going to fight a duel on her account!.... Jealousy, at that moment, wrung
th