“She writes well, does she not?” said Lydia, with a gleam of savage triumph in her eyes. “Do you believe me, now?... Do you see that we have the same interest to-day, a common affront to avenge? And we will avenge it.... Do you understand that you can not allow your husband to fight a duel with my brother? You owe that to me who have given you this weapon by which you hold him.... Threaten him with a divorce. Fortune is with you. The law will give you your child. I repeat, you hold him firmly. You will prevent the duel, will you not?”
“Ah! What do you think it matters to me now if they fight or not?” said Maud. “From the moment he deceived me was I not widowed? Do not approach me,” she added, looking at Lydia with wild eyes, while a shudder of repulsion shook her entire frame.... “Do not speak to me.... I have as much horror of you as of him.... Let me go, let me leave here.... Even to feel myself in the same room with you fills me with horror.... Ah, what disgrace!”
She retreated to the door, fixing upon her informant a gaze which the other sustained, notwithstanding the scorn in it, with the gloomy pride of defiance. She went out repeating: “Ah, what disgrace!” without Lydia having addressed her, so greatly had surprise at the unexpected result of all her attempts paralyzed her. But the formidable creature lost no time in regret and repentance. She paused a few moments to think. Then, 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.
CHAPTER VIII. ON THE GROUND
When Maud Gorka left the house on the Rue Leopardi she walked on at first rapidly, blindly, without seeing, without hearing anything, like a wounded animal which runs through the thicket to escape danger, to escape its wounds, to escape itself. It was a little more than half-past three o’clock when the unhappy woman hastened from the studio, unable to bear near her the presence of Lydia Maitland, of that sinister worker of vengeance who had so cruelly revealed to her, with such indisputable proofs, the atrocious affair, the long, the infamous, the inexpiable treason.
It was almost six o’clock before Maud Gorka really regained consciousness. A very common occurrence aroused her from the somnambulism of suffering in which she had wandered for two hours. The storm which had threatened since noon at length broke. Maud, who had scarcely heeded the first large drops, was forced to seek shelter when the clouds suddenly burst, and she took refuge at the right extremity of the colonnade of St. Peter’s. How had she gone that far? She did not know herself precisely. She remembered vaguely that she had wandered through a labyrinth of small streets, had crossed the Tiber—no doubt by the Garibaldi bridge—had passed through a large garden—doubtless the Janicule, since she had walked along a portion of the ramparts. She had left the city by the Porte de Saint-Pancrace, to follow by that of Cavallegieri the sinuous line of the Urban walls.