travel, his hair disordered, his hands and face dirty. It
was, though somewhat thinner, the elegant Gorka whom Dorsenne had
known--tall, slender, and perfumed, in full dress, a bouquet in his
buttonhole, his lips smiling. To the novelist, knowing what he knew,
the smile and the composure had something in them more terrible than the
frenzy of the day before. He comprehended it by the manner in which the
Pole gave him his hand. One night and a day of reflection had undermined
his work, and if Boleslas had enacted the comedy to the point of lulling
his wife's suspicions and of deciding on the visit of that evening, it
was because he had resolved not to consult any one and to lead his own
inquiry. He was succeeding in the beginning; he had certainly perceived
Madame Steno's white gown upon the terrace, while radiant Maud explained
his unexpected return with her usual ingenuousness.

"This is what comes of sending to a doting father accounts of our boy's
health.... I wrote him the other day that Luc had a little fever. He
wrote to ask about its progress. I did not receive his letter. He became
uneasy, and here he is."

"I will tell mamma," said Alba, passing out upon the terrace, but her
haste seemed too slow to Dorsenne. He had such a presentiment of danger
that he did not think of smiling, as he would have done on any other
occasion, at the absolute success of the deception which he and Boleslas
had planned on the preceding day, and of which the Count had said, with
a fatuity now proven: "Maud will be so happy to see me that she will
believe all."

It was a scene both simple and tragical--of that order in which in
society the most horrible incidents occur without a sound, without a
gesture, amid phrases of conventionality and in a festal framework!
Two of the spectators, at least, besides Julien, understood its
importance-Ardea and Hafner. For neither the one nor the other had
failed to notice the relations between Madame Steno and Maitland, much
less her position with regard to Gorka. The writer, the grand seigneur,
and the business man had, notwithstanding the differences of age and of
position, a large experience of analogous circumstances.

They knew of what presence of mind a courageous woman was capable, when
surprised, as was the Venetian. All these have declared since that they
had never imagined more admirable self-possession, a composure more
superbly audacious, than that displayed by Madame Steno, at that
d