of that order. But Chapron was the brother-in-law of Maitland, of the
new friend with whom Madame Steno had become infatuated during the
absence of the Polish Count, and what a brother-in-law! He of whom
Dorsenne said: "He would set Rome on fire to cook an egg for his
sister's husband." When Madame Steno announced that duel to her
daughter, an invincible and immediate deduction possessed the poor
child--Florent was fighting for his brother-in-law. And on account
of whom, if not of Madame Steno? The thought would not, however, have
possessed her a second in the face of the very plausible explanation
made by the Countess, if Alba had not had in her heart a certain proof
that her mother was not telling the truth. The young girl loved Maud as
much as she was loved by her. She knew the sensibility of her faithful
and, delicate friend, as that friend knew hers. For Maud to write her
mother a letter which produced an immediate rupture, there must have
been some grave reason.

Another material proof was soon joined to that moral proof. Granted the
character and the habits of the Countess, since she had not shown Maud's
letter to her daughter there and then, it was because the letter was not
fit to be shown. But she heard on the following day only the description
of the duel, related by Maitland to Madame Steno, the savage aggression
of Gorka against Dorsenne, the composure of the latter and the issue,
relatively harmless, of the two duels.

"You see," said her mother to her, "I was right in saying that Gorka is
mad!... It seems he has had a fit of insanity since the duel, and that
they prevent him from seeing any one.... Can you now comprehend how Maud
could blame me for what is hereditary in the Gorka family?"

Such was indeed the story which the Venetian and her friends, Hafner,
Ardea, and others, circulated throughout Rome in order to diminish the
scandal. The accusation of madness is very common to women who have
goaded to excess man's passion, and who then wish to avoid all blame for
the deeds or words of that man. In this case, Boleslas's fury and his
two incomprehensible duels, fifteen minutes apart, justified the story.
When it became known in the city that the Palazzetto Doria was strictly
closed, that Maud Gorka received no one, and finally that she was
taking away her husband in the manner which resembled a flight, no doubt
remained of the young man's wrecked reason.

Two persons profited very handsomely by the