“Madame Steno?” repeated Maud. “Catherine Steno is the cause of that duel? How?”
“Because she is my husband’s mistress,” replied Lydia, brutally; “because she has been your husband’s, because Gorka came here, mad with jealousy, to provoke Lincoln, and because he met my brother, who prevented him from entering.... They quarrelled, I know not in what manner. But I know the cause of the duel.... Am I right, yes or no, in telling you they are to fight about that woman?”
“My husband’s mistress?” cried Maud. “You say Madame Steno has been my husband’s mistress? It is not true. You lie! You lie! You lie! I do not believe it.”
“You do not believe me?” said Lydia, shrugging her shoulders. “As if I had the least interest in deceiving you; as if one would lie when the life of the only being one loves in the world is in the balance! For I have only my brother, and perhaps to-morrow I shall no longer have him.... But you shall believe me. I desire that we both hate that woman, that we both be avenged upon her, as we both do not wish the duel to take place—the duel of which, I repeat, she is the cause, the sole cause.... You do not believe me? Do you know what caused your husband to return? You did not expect him; confess! It was I—I, do you hear—who wrote him what Steno and Lincoln were doing; day after day I wrote about their love, their meetings, their bliss. Ah, I was sure it would not be in vain, and he returned. Is that a proof?”
“You did not do that?” cried Madame Gorka, recoiling with horror. “It was infamous.”
“Yes, I did it,” replied Lydia, with savage pride, “and why not? It was my right when she took my husband from me. You have only to return and to look in the place where Gorka keeps his letters. You will certainly find those I wrote, and others, I assure you, from that woman. For she has a mania for letter-writing.... Do you believe me now, or will you repeat that I have lied?”
“Never,” returned Maud, with sorrowful indignation upon her lovely, loyal face, “no, never will I descend to such baseness.”
“Well, I will descend for you,” said Lydia. “What you do not dare to do, I will dare, and you will ask me to aid you in being avenged. Come,” and, seizing the hand of her stupefied companion, she drew her into Lincoln’s studio, at that moment unoccupied. She approached one of those Spanish desks, called baygenos, and she touched two small panels, which disclosed, on opening, a secret drawer, in which were a package of letters, which she seized. Maud Gorka watched her with the same terrified horror with which she would have seen some one killed and robbed. That honorable soul revolted at the scene in which her mere presence made of her an accomplice. But at the same time she was a prey, as had been her husband several days before, to that maddening appetite to know the truth, which becomes, in certain forms of doubt, a physical need, as imperious as hunger and thirst, and she listened to Florent’s sister, who continued:
“Will it be a proof when you have seen the affair written in her own hand? Yes,” she continued, with cruel irony, “she loves correspondence, our fortunate rival. Justice must be rendered her that she may make no more avowals. She writes as she feels. It seems that the successor was jealous of his predecessor.... See, is this a proof this time?”.... And, after having glanced at the first letters as a person familiar with them, she handed one of those papers to Maud, who had not the courage to avert her eyes. What she saw written upon that sheet drew from her a cry of anguish. She had, however, only read ten lines, which proved how much mistaken psychological Dorsenne was in thinking that Maitland was ignorant of the former relations between his mistress and Gorka. Countess Steno’s grandeur, that which made a courageous woman almost a heroine in her passions, was an absolute sincerity and disgust for the usual pettiness of flirtations. She would have disdained to deny to a new lover the knowledge of her past, and the semiavowals, so common to women, would have seemed to her a cowardice still worse. She had not essayed to hide from Maitland what connection she had broken off for him, and it was upon one of those phrases, in which she spoke of it openly, that Madame Gorka’s eyes fell:
“You will be pleased with me,” she wrote, “and I shall no longer see in your dear blue eyes which I kiss, as I love them, that gleam of mistrust which troubles me. I have stopped the correspondence with Gorka. If you require it, I will even break with Maud, notwithstanding the reason you know of and which will render it difficult for me. But how can you be jealous yet?... Is not my frankness with regard to that liaison the surest guarantee that it is ended? Come, do not be jealous. Listen to what I know so well, that I felt I loved, and that my life began only on the day when you took me in your arms. The woman you have awakened in me, no one has known—”