goodness. As
large and stout as Lydia was slender, she would rather have borne her to
her bed in her vigorous arms than to have abandoned her in the troubled
state in which she had surprised her. Not less practical and, as her
compatriots say, as matter-of-fact as she was charitable, she began to
question her friend on the symptoms which had preceded that attack, when
with astonishment she saw that altered face contract, tears gushing from
the closed eyes, and the fragile form convulsed by sobs. Lydia had
a nervous attack caused by anxiety, by the fresh disappointment of
Boleslas's absence from home, and no doubt, too, by the gentleness with
which Maud addressed her, and tearing her handkerchief with her white
teeth, she moaned:

"No, I am not ill. But it is that thought which I can not bear. No, I
can not. Ah, it is maddening!" And turning toward her companion, she in
her turn pressed her hands, saying: "But you know nothing! You suspect
nothing! It is that which maddens me, when I see you tranquil, calm,
happy, as if the minutes were not valuable, every one, to-day, to you as
well as to me. For if one is my brother, the other is your husband; and
you love him. You must love him, to have pardoned him for what you have
pardoned him."

She had spoken in a sort of delirium, brought about by her extreme
nervous excitement, and she had uttered, she, usually so dissembling,
her very deepest thought. She did not think she was giving Madame Gorka
any information by that allusion, so direct, to the liaison of Boleslas
with Madame Steno. She was persuaded, as was entire Rome, that Maud knew
of her husband's infidelities, and that she tolerated them by one of
those heroic sacrifices which maternity justifies. How many women have
immolated thus their wifely pride to maintain the domestic relation
which the father shall at least not desert officially! All Rome was
mistaken, and Lydia Maitland was to have an unexpected proof. Not a
suspicion that such an intrigue could unite her husband with the mother
of her best friend had ever entered the thoughts of Boleslas's wife.
But to account for that, it is necessary to admit, as well, and
to comprehend the depth of innocence of which, notwithstanding her
twenty-six years, the beautiful and healthy Englishwoman, with her eyes
so clear, so frank, was possessed.

She was one of those persons who command the respect of the boldest of
men, and before whom the most dissolute women exercised