the presence of him she loved. No doubt she
had an appointment on the race-course with Maitland, as she had formerly
had with him, and the painter had gone thither when he should have cared
for his courageous, his noble brother-in-law, whom he had allowed to
fight for him! What a worthy lover the selfish and brutal American was
of that vile creature! The image of the happy couple tortured Boleslas
with the bitterest jealousy intermingled with disgust, and, by contrast,
he thought of his own wife, the proud and tender Maud whom he had lost.

He pictured to himself other illnesses when he had seen that beautiful
nurse by his bedside. He saw again the true glance with which that wife,
so shamefully betrayed, looked at him, the movements of her loyal hands,
which yielded to no one the care of waiting upon him. To-day she had
allowed him to go to a duel without seeing him. He had returned. She had
not even inquired as to his wound. The doctor had dressed it without
her presence, and all that he knew of her was what he learned from their
child. For he sent for Luc. He explained to him his broken arm, as
had been agreed upon with his friends, by a fall on the staircase, and
little Luc replied:

"When will you join us, then? Mamma says we leave for England this
evening or in the morning. All the trunks are almost ready."

That evening or to-morrow? So Maud was going to execute her threat. She
was going away forever, and without an explanation. He could not even
plead his cause once more to the woman who certainly would not respond
to another appeal, since she had found, in her outraged pride, the
strength to be severe, when he was in danger of death. In the face
of that evidence of the desertion of all connected with him, Boleslas
suffered one of those accesses of discouragement, deep, absolute,
irremediable, in which one longs to sleep forever. He asked himself:
"Were I to try one more step?" and he replied: "She will not!" when his
valet entered with word that the Countess desired to speak with him.
His agitation was so extreme that, for a second, he fancied it was with
regard to Madame Steno, and he was almost afraid to see his wife enter.

Without any doubt, the emotions undergone during the past few days had
been very great. He had, however, experienced none more violent, even
beneath the pistol raised by Dorsenne, than that of seeing advance to
his bed the embodiment of his remorse. Maud's face, in which ordinarily
gl