unexpected return with her usual ingenuousness.

"This is what comes of sending to a doting father accounts of our boy's
health.... I wrote him the other day that Luc had a little fever. He
wrote to ask about its progress. I did not receive his letter. He
became uneasy, and here he is."

"I will tell mamma," said Alba, passing out upon the terrace, but her
haste seemed too slow to Dorsenne. He had such a presentiment of danger
that he did not think of smiling, as he would have done on any other
occasion, at the absolute success of the deception which he and Boleslas
had planned on the preceding day, and of which the Count had said, with a
fatuity now proven: "Maud will be so happy to see me that she will
believe all."

It was a scene both simple and tragical--of that order in which in
society the most horrible incidents occur without a sound, without a
gesture, amid phrases of conventionality and in a festal framework! Two
of the spectators, at least, besides Julien, understood its importance-
Ardea and Hafner. For neither the one nor the other had failed to notice
the relations between Madame Steno and Maitland, much less her position
with regard to Gorka. The writer, the grand seigneur, and the business
man had, notwithstanding the differences of age and of position, a large
experience of analogous circumstances.

They knew of what presence of mind a courageous woman was capable, when
surprised, as was the Venetian. All these have declared since that they
had never imagined more admirable self-possession, a composure more
superbly audacious, than that displayed by Madame Steno, at that decisive
moment. She appeared on the threshold of the French window, surprised