t the
corners of her mouth:

"It is all the same. It is necessary that Maud Gorka work with me
against her. There is some one whom she will not pardon, and that
is.... Madame Steno." And, in spite of her uneasiness, the wicked woman
trembled with delight at the thought of her work.

CHAPTER VIII. ON THE GROUND

When Maud Gorka left the house on the Rue Leopardi she walked on at
first rapidly, blindly, without seeing, without hearing anything, like
a wounded animal which runs through the thicket to escape danger, to
escape its wounds, to escape itself. It was a little more than half-past
three o'clock when the unhappy woman hastened from the studio, unable to
bear near her the presence of Lydia Maitland, of that sinister worker
of vengeance who had so cruelly revealed to her, with such indisputable
proofs, the atrocious affair, the long, the infamous, the inexpiable
treason.

It was almost six o'clock before Maud Gorka really regained
consciousness. A very common occurrence aroused her from the
somnambulism of suffering in which she had wandered for two hours. The
storm which had threatened since noon at length broke. Maud, who had
scarcely heeded the first large drops, was forced to seek shelter when
the clouds suddenly burst, and she took refuge at the right extremity
of the colonnade of St. Peter's. How had she gone that far? She did not
know herself precisely. She remembered vaguely that she had wandered
through a labyrinth of small streets, had crossed the Tiber--no doubt by
the Garibaldi bridge--had passed through a large garden--doubtless the
Janicule, since she had walked along a portion of the ramparts. She
had left the city by the Porte de Saint-Pancrace, to follow by that of
Cavallegieri the sinuous line of the Urban walls.

That corner of Rome, with a view of the pines of the Villa Pamfili on
one side, and on the other the back part of the Vatican, serves as a
promenade during the winter for the few cardinals who go in search of
the afternoon sun, certain there of meeting only a few strangers. In the
month of May it is a desert, scorched by the sun, which glows upon
the brick, discolored by two centuries of that implacable heat which
caresses the scales of the green and gray lizards about to crawl between
the bees of Pope Urbain VIII's escutcheon of the Barberini family.
Madame Gorka's instinct had at least served her in leading her upon a
route on which she met no one. Now the sense of reality re