crushing in her nervous hand the letter she had shown Maud, at the risk
of being discovered by her husband later, she said aloud:

"Coward! Lord, what a coward she is! She loves. She will pardon. Will
there, then, be no one to aid me? No one to smite them in their insolent
happiness." After meditating awhile, her face still more contracted, she
placed the letter in the drawer, which she closed again, and half an hour
later she summoned a commissionaire, to whom she intrusted a letter, with
the order to deliver it immediately, and that letter was addressed to the
inspector of police of the district. She informed him of the intended
duel, giving him the names of the two adversaries and of the four
seconds. If she had not been afraid of her brother, she would even that
time have signed her name.

"I should have gone to work that way at first," said she to herself, when
the door of the small salon closed behind the messenger to whom she had
given her order personally. "The police know how to prevent them from
fighting, even if I do not succeed with Florent.... As for him?"....
and she looked at a portrait of Maitland upon the desk at which she had
just been writing. "Were I to tell him what is taking place.... No, I
will ask nothing of him.... I hate him too much.".... And she concluded
with a fierce smile, which disclosed her teeth at the corners of her
mouth:

"It is all the same. It is necessary that Maud Gorka work with me
against her. There is some one whom she will not pardon, and that is....
Madame Steno." And, in spite of her uneasiness, the wicked woman
trembled with delight at the thought of her work.