“I was sure Dorsenne would not fail us,” said Alba, gazing at the young man with her large eyes, of a blue as clear as those of Madame Gorka were dark.  “Only that I expected we should meet him on the staircase as we were leaving, and that he would say to us, in surprise:  ’What, I am not on time?’ Ah,” she continued, “do not excuse yourself, but reply to the examination in Roman history we are about to put you through.  We have to follow here a veritable course studying all these old chests.  What are the arms of this family?” she asked, leaning with Dorsenne over one of the cassoni.  “You do not know?  The Carafa, famous man!  And what Pope did they have?  You do not know that either?  Paul Fourth, sir novelist.  If ever you visit us in Venice, you will be surprised at the Doges.”

She employed so affectionate a grace in that speech, and she was so apparently in one of her moods—­so rare, alas! of childish joyousness, that Dorsenne, preoccupied as he was, felt his heart contract on her account.  The simultaneous absence of Madame Steno and Lincoln Maitland could only be fortuitous.  But persuaded that the Countess loved Maitland, and not doubting that she was his mistress, the absence of both appeared singularly suspicious to him.  Such a thought sufficed to render the young girl’s innocent gayety painful to him.  That gayety would become tragical if it were true that the Countess’s other lover had returned unexpectedly, warned by some one.  Dorsenne experienced genuine agitation on asking Madame Gorka: 

“How is Boleslas?”

“Very well, I suppose,” said his wife.  “I have not had a letter to-day.  Does not one of your proverbs say, ‘No news is good news?’”

Baron Hafner was beside Maud Gorka when she uttered that sentence.  Involuntarily Dorsenne looked at him, and involuntarily, master as he was of himself, he looked at Dorsenne.  It was no longer a question of a simple hypothesis.  That Boleslas Gorka had returned to Rome unknown to his wife constituted, for any one who knew of his relations with Madame Steno, and of the infidelity of the latter, an event full of formidable consequences.  Both men were possessed by the same thought.  Was there still time to prevent a catastrophe?  But each of them in this circumstance, as is so often the case in important matters of life, was to show the deepness of his character.  Not a muscle of Hafner’s face quivered.  It was a question, perhaps, of rendering a service to a woman in danger, whom he loved with all the feeling of which he was capable.  That woman was the mainspring of his social position in Rome.  She was still more.  A plan for Fanny’s marriage, as yet secret, but on the point of being consummated, depended upon Madame Steno.  But he felt it impossible to attempt to render her any service before having spent half an hour in the rooms of the Palais Castagna, and he began to employ that half hour in a manner which would be most profitable to his possible purchases, for he turned to Madame Gorka and said to her, with the rather exaggerated politeness habitual to him: