absurd encounter resulted from it? And Maud, who writes me that she will
never pardon me, that I am a false friend, that I did it expressly to
exasperate her husband.... Ah, let her watch her husband, let her lock
him up, if he is mad! And I, who have received them as I have, I, who
have made their position for them in Rome, I, who had no other thought
than for her just now!.... You hear," she added, pressing her daughter's
hand with a fervor which was at least sincere, if her words were
untruthful, "I forbid you seeing her again or writing to her. If she
does not offer me an apology for her insulting note, I no longer wish to
know her. One is foolish to be so kind!"

For the first time, while listening to that speech, Alba was convinced
that her mother was deceiving her. Since suspicion had entered her heart
with regard to her mother, the object until then of such admiration and
affection, she had passed through many stages of mistrust. To talk with
the Countess was always to dissipate them. That was because Madame
Steno, apart from her amorous immorality, was of a frank and truthful
nature.

It was indeed a customary and known weakness of Florent's to repeat those
witticisms which abound in national epigrams, as mediocre as they are
iniquitous. Alba could recall at least twenty circumstances when the
excellent man had uttered such jests at which a sensitive person might
take offence. She would not have thought it utterly impossible that a
duel between Gorka and Chapron might have been provoked by an incident of
that order. But Chapron was the brother-in-law of Maitland, of the new
friend with whom Madame Steno had become infatuated during the absence of
the Polish Count, and what a brother-in-law! He of whom Dorsenne said:
"He would set Rome on fire to cook an egg for his sister's husband."
When Madame Steno announced that duel to her daughter, an invincible and