"How did you learn their production?" questioned Madame Steno.

"Ask him," said Maitland, pointing to Chapron with the end of his brush.
"When there is a question of enriching his old Maitland's collection, he
becomes more of a merchant than the merchants themselves. They tell him
all.... Vinci or no Vinci, it is the pure Lombard style. Buy them. I
want them."

"I will go, then," replied Florent. "Countess.... Contessina."

He bowed to Madame Steno and her daughter. The mother bestowed upon him
her pleasantest smile. She was not one of those mistresses to whom
their lovers' intimate friends are always enemies. On the contrary, she
enveloped them in the abundant and blissful sympathy which love awoke in
her. Besides, she was too cunning not to feel that Florent approved of
her love. But, on the other hand, the intense aversion which Alba at
that moment felt toward her mother's suspected intrigues was expressed
by the formality with which she inclined her head in response to the
farewell of the young man, who was too happy to have found that the
dispute had not been heard.

"From now until to-morrow," thought he, on redescending the staircase,
"there will be no one to warn Lincoln.... The purchase of the drawings
was an invention to demonstrate my tranquillity....Now I must find two
discreet seconds."

Florent was a very deliberate man, and a man who had at his command
perfect evenness of temperament whenever it was not a question of his
enthusiastic attachment to his brother-in-law. He had the power of
observation habitual to persons whose sensitive amour propre has
frequently been wounded. He therefore deferred until later his difficult
choice and went to luncheon, as if nothing had happened, at the
restaurant where he was expected. Certainly the proprietor did not
mistrust, in replying to the questions of his guest relative to the most
recent portraits of Lenbach, that the young man, so calm, so smiling,
had on hand a duel which might cost him his life. It was only on leaving
the restaurant that Florent, after mentally reviewing ten of his older
acquaintances, resolved to make a first attempt upon Dorsenne. He
recalled the mysterious intelligence given him by the novelist, whose
sympathy for Maitland had been publicly manifested by an eloquent
article. Moreover, he believed him to be madly in love with Alba Steno.
That was one probability more in favor of his discretion.

Dorsenne would surely maintain silence