er? You owe that to me who have given you this weapon
by which you hold him.... Threaten him with a divorce. Fortune is with
you. The law will give you your child. I repeat, you hold him firmly.
You will prevent the duel, will you not?"

"Ah! What do you think it matters to me now if they fight or not?" said
Maud. "From the moment he deceived me was I not widowed? Do not approach
me," she added, looking at Lydia with wild eyes, while a shudder of
repulsion shook her entire frame.... "Do not speak to me.... I have as
much horror of you as of him.... Let me go, let me leave here.... Even
to feel myself in the same room with you fills me with horror.... Ah,
what disgrace!"

She retreated to the door, fixing upon her informant a gaze which the
other sustained, notwithstanding the scorn in it, with the gloomy pride
of defiance. She went out repeating: "Ah, what disgrace!" without Lydia
having addressed her, so greatly had surprise at the unexpected result
of all her attempts paralyzed her. But the formidable creature lost no
time in regret and repentance. She paused a few moments to think. Then,
crushing in her nervous hand the letter she had shown Maud, at the risk
of being discovered by her husband later, she said aloud:

"Coward! Lord, what a coward she is! She loves. She will pardon. Will
there, then, be no one to aid me? No one to smite them in their insolent
happiness." After meditating awhile, her face still more contracted,
she placed the letter in the drawer, which she closed again, and half
an hour later she summoned a commissionaire, to whom she intrusted a
letter, with the order to deliver it immediately, and that letter was
addressed to the inspector of police of the district. She informed him
of the intended duel, giving him the names of the two adversaries and of
the four seconds. If she had not been afraid of her brother, she would
even that time have signed her name.

"I should have gone to work that way at first," said she to herself,
when the door of the small salon closed behind the messenger to whom
she had given her order personally. "The police know how to prevent
them from fighting, even if I do not succeed with Florent.... As for
him?".... and she looked at a portrait of Maitland upon the desk at
which she had just been writing. "Were I to tell him what is taking
place.... No, I will ask nothing of him.... I hate him too much."....
And she concluded with a fierce smile, which disclosed her teeth a