large and stout as Lydia was slender, she would rather have borne her to
her bed in her vigorous arms than to have abandoned her in the troubled
state in which she had surprised her. Not less practical and, as her
compatriots say, as matter-of-fact as she was charitable, she began to
question her friend on the symptoms which had preceded that attack, when
with astonishment she saw that altered face contract, tears gushing from
the closed eyes, and the fragile form convulsed by sobs. Lydia had a
nervous attack caused by anxiety, by the fresh disappointment of
Boleslas's absence from home, and no doubt, too, by the gentleness with
which Maud addressed her, and tearing her handkerchief with her white
teeth, she moaned:

"No, I am not ill. But it is that thought which I can not bear. No, I
can not. Ah, it is maddening!" And turning toward her companion, she in
her turn pressed her hands, saying: "But you know nothing! You suspect
nothing! It is that which maddens me, when I see you tranquil, calm,
happy, as if the minutes were not valuable, every one, to-day, to you as
well as to me. For if one is my brother, the other is your husband; and
you love him. You must love him, to have pardoned him for what you have
pardoned him."

She had spoken in a sort of delirium, brought about by her extreme
nervous excitement, and she had uttered, she, usually so dissembling, her
very deepest thought. She did not think she was giving Madame Gorka any
information by that allusion, so direct, to the liaison of Boleslas with
Madame Steno. She was persuaded, as was entire Rome, that Maud knew of
her husband's infidelities, and that she tolerated them by one of those
heroic sacrifices which maternity justifies. How many women have
immolated thus their wifely pride to maintain the domestic relation which
the father shall at least not desert officially! All Rome was mistaken,