and Lydia Maitland was to have an unexpected proof. Not a suspicion that
such an intrigue could unite her husband with the mother of her best
friend had ever entered the thoughts of Boleslas's wife. But to account
for that, it is necessary to admit, as well, and to comprehend the depth
of innocence of which, notwithstanding her twenty-six years, the
beautiful and healthy Englishwoman, with her eyes so clear, so frank, was
possessed.

She was one of those persons who command the respect of the boldest of
men, and before whom the most dissolute women exercised care. She might
have seen the freedom of Madame Steno without being disillusioned. She
had only a liking for acquaintances and positive conversation. She was
very intellectual, but without any desire to study character.

Dorsenne said of her, with more justness than he thought: "Madame
Boleslas Gorka is married to a man who has never been presented to her,"
meaning by that, that first of all she had no idea of her husband's
character, and then of the treason of which she was the victim. However,
the novelist was not altogether right. Boleslas's infidelity was of too
long standing for the woman passionately, religiously loyal, who was his
wife, not to have suffered by it. But there was an abyss between such
sufferings and the intuition of a determined fact such as that which
Lydia had just mentioned, and such a suspicion was so far from Maud's
thoughts that her companion's words only aroused in her astonishment at
the mysterious danger of which Lydia's troubles was a proof more eloquent
still than her words.

"Your brother? My husband?" she said. "I do not understand you."

"Naturally," replied Lydia, "he has hidden all from you, as Florent hid