anonymous letter, to reach that woman's side twenty-four hours sooner.
What a proof of passion was the frenzy which had not allowed him any
longer to bear doubt and absence!.... Did he love the mistress who did
not even love him, since she had deceived him with Maitland? And he was
going to fight a duel on her account!.... Jealousy, at that moment,
wrung the wife's heart with a pang still stronger than that of
indignation. She, the strong Englishwoman, so large, so robust, almost
masculine in form, mentally compared herself with the supple Italian with
her form so round, with her gestures so graceful, her hands so delicate,
her feet so dainty; compared herself with the creature of desire, whose
every movement implied a secret wave of passion, and she ceased her cry--
"Ah, how could he?"--at once. She had a clear knowledge of the power of
her rival.

It is indeed a supreme agony for an honorable woman, who loves, to feel
herself thus degraded by the mere thought of the intoxication her husband
has tasted in arms more beautiful, more caressing, more entwining than
hers. It was, too, a signal for the return of will to the tortured but
proud soul. Disgust possessed her, so violent, so complete, for the
atmosphere of falsehood and of sensuality in which Boleslas had lived two
years, that she drew herself up, becoming again strong and implacable.
Braving the storm, she turned in the direction of her home, with this
resolution as firmly rooted in her mind as if she had deliberated for
months and months.

"I will not remain with that man another day. Tomorrow I will leave for
England with my son."

How many, in a similar situation, have uttered such vows, to abjure them
when they find themselves face to face with the man who has betrayed