“Why should I receive anonymous letters?” asked the girl, quickly.  “I have neither fame, beauty, nor wealth, and am not to be envied.”

As Dorsenne looked at her, regretting that he had said so much, she forced her sad lips to smile, and added:  “If you are really my friend, instead of making me lose time by your advice, of which I shall probably never have need, for I shall never become a great authoress, help me to serve the tea, will you?  It should be ready.”  And with her slender fingers she raised the lid of the kettle, saying:  “Go and ask Madame Maitland if she will take some tea this evening, and Fanny, too....  Ardea takes whiskey and the Baron mineral water....  You can ring for his glass of vichy....  There....  You have delayed me....  There are more callers and nothing is ready....  Ah,” she cried, “it is Maud!”—­then, with surprise, “and her husband!”

Indeed, the folding doors of the hall opened to admit Maud Gorka, a robust British beauty, radiant with happiness, attired in a gown of black crepe de Chine with orange ribbons, which set off to advantage her fresh color.  Behind her came Boleslas.  But he was no longer the traveller who, thirty-six hours before, had arrived at the Place de la Trinite-des-Monts, mad with anxiety, wild with jealousy, soiled by the dust of travel, his hair disordered, his hands and face dirty.  It was, though somewhat thinner, the elegant Gorka whom Dorsenne had known—­tall, slender, and perfumed, in full dress, a bouquet in his buttonhole, his lips smiling.  To the novelist, knowing what he knew, the smile and the composure had something in them more terrible than the frenzy of the day before.  He comprehended it by the manner in which the Pole gave him his hand.  One night and a day of reflection had undermined his work, and if Boleslas had enacted the comedy to the point of lulling his wife’s suspicions and of deciding on the visit of that evening, it was because he had resolved not to consult any one and to lead his own inquiry.  He was succeeding in the beginning; he had certainly perceived Madame Steno’s white gown upon the terrace, while radiant Maud explained his unexpected return with her usual ingenuousness.

“This is what comes of sending to a doting father accounts of our boy’s health....  I wrote him the other day that Luc had a little fever.  He wrote to ask about its progress.  I did not receive his letter.  He became uneasy, and here he is.”

“I will tell mamma,” said Alba, passing out upon the terrace, but her haste seemed too slow to Dorsenne.  He had such a presentiment of danger that he did not think of smiling, as he would have done on any other occasion, at the absolute success of the deception which he and Boleslas had planned on the preceding day, and of which the Count had said, with a fatuity now proven:  “Maud will be so happy to see me that she will believe all.”