only point on which I can strike you, I will strike you there. I hold
you by that means, do you hear, and I will keep you. Either you dismiss
that man, or I will no longer respect anything. My wife shall know all!
Her! So much the better! For some time I have been stifled by my
lies.... Your daughter, too, shall know all. She shall judge you now as
she would judge you one day."

As he spoke he advanced to her with a manner so cruel that she recoiled.
A few more moments and the man would have carried out his threat.
He was about to strike her, to break objects around him, to call forth
a terrible scandal. She had the presence of mind of an audacity more
courageous still. An electric bell was near at hand. She pressed it,
while Gorka said to her, with a scornful laugh, "That was the only
affront left you to offer me--to summon your servants to defend you."

"You are mistaken," she replied. "I am not afraid. I repeat you are
mad, and I simply wish to prove it to you by recalling you to the reality
of your situation.... Bid Mademoiselle Alba come down," said she to the
footman whom her ring had summoned. That phrase was the drop of cold
water which suddenly broke the furious jet of vapor. She had found the
only means of putting an end to the terrible scene. For, notwithstanding
his menace, she knew that Maud's husband always recoiled before the young
girl, the friend of his wife, of whose delicacy and sensibility he was
aware.

Gorka was capable of the most dangerous and most cruel deeds, in an
excess of passion augmented by vanity.

He had in him a chivalrous element which would paralyze his frenzy before
Alba. As for the immorality of that combination of defence which