hen the door was closed upon the
Countess. "Yes, what a pity that five years ago in Venice I was not
free! Who knows? If I had dared, when she took me to my hotel in her
gondola. She was about to leave San Giobbe. She had not yet accepted
Boleslas. She would have advised--have directed me. I should have
speculated on the Bourse, as she did, with Hafner's counsel. But not in
the quality of son-in-law. I should not have been obliged to marry. And
she would not now have such bad tobacco.".... He was on the point of
lighting one of the Virginian cigarettes, a present from Maitland. He
threw it away, making a grimace with his air of a spoiled child, at the
risk of scorching the rug which lay upon the marble floor; and he passed
into the antechamber in order to fetch his own case in the pocket of the
light overcoat he had prudently taken on coming out after eight o'clock.

As he lighted one of the cigarettes in that case, filled with so-called
Egyptian tobacco, mixed with opium and saltpetre, which he preferred to
the tobacco of the American, he mechanically glanced at the card which
the servant had left on going from the room-the card of the unknown
visitor for whom Madame Steno had left him.

Ardea read upon it, with astonishment, these words:

Count Boleslas Gorka.

"She is better than I thought her," said he, on reentering the deserted
office. "She had no need to bid me not to go. I think I should wait to
see her return from that conversation."

It was indeed Boleslas whom the Countess found in the salon, which she
had chosen as the room the most convenient for the stormy explanation
she anticipated. It was isolated at the end of the hall, and was like
a pendant to the terrace. It formed, with the dining-room, the entire
ground-floor, or, rather, the entresol of the house. Madame Steno's
apartments, as well as the other small salon in which Peppino was, were
on the first floor, together with the rooms set apart for the Contessina
and her German governess, Fraulein Weber, for the time being on a
journey.

The Countess had not been mistaken. At the first glance exchanged on the
preceding day with Gorka, she had divined that he knew all. She would
have suspected it, nevertheless, since Hafner had told her the few words
indiscreetly uttered by Dorsenne on the clandestine return of the
Pole to Rome. She had not at that time been mistaken in Boleslas's
intentions, and she had no sooner looked in his face than she felt
he