And he fell into a deep revery, interrupted only by the hum of the conversation, in which he did not participate.  It would have satisfied him had he observed, instead of meditated, that the truth with regard to the author of the anonymous letters might have become clear to him, as clear as the courage of Madame Steno in meeting danger—­as the blind confidence of Madame Gorka—­as the disdainful imperturbability of Maitland before his rival and the suppressed rage of that rival—­as the finesse of Hafner in sustaining the general conversation—­as the assiduous attentions of Ardea to Fanny—­as the emotion of the latter—­as clear as Alba’s sense of relief.  All those faces, on Boleslas’s entrance, had expressed different feelings.  Only one had, for several minutes, expressed the joy of crime and the avidity of ultimately satisfied hatred.  But as it was that of little Madame Maitland, the silent creature, considered so constantly by him as stupid and insignificant, Dorsenne had not paid more attention to it than had the other witnesses the surprising reappearance of the betrayed lover.

Every country has a metaphor to express the idea that there is no worse water than that which is stagnant.  Still waters run deep, say the English, and the Italians, Still waters ruin bridges.

These adages would not be accurate if one did not forget them in practise, and the professional analyst of the feminine heart had entirely forgotten them on that evening.

CHAPTER V

COUNTESS STENO

A woman less courageous than the Countess, less capable of looking a situation in the face and of advancing to it, such an evening would have marked the prelude to one of those nights of insomnia when the mind exhausts in advance all the agonies of probable danger.  Countess Steno did not know what weakness and fear were.

A creature of energy and of action, who felt herself to be above all danger, she attached no meaning to the word uneasiness.  So she slept, on the night which followed that soiree, a sleep as profound, as refreshing, as if Gorka had never returned with vengeance in his heart, with threats in his eyes.  Toward ten o’clock the following morning, she was in the tiny salon, or rather, the office adjoining her bedroom, examining several accounts brought by one of her men of business.  Rising at seven o’clock, according to her custom, she had taken the cold bath in which, in summer as well as winter, she daily quickened her blood.  She had breakfasted, ‘a l’anglaise’, following the rule to which she claimed to owe the preservation of her digestion, upon eggs, cold meat, and tea.  She had made her complicated toilette, had visited her daughter to ascertain how she had slept, had written five letters, for her cosmopolitan salon compelled her to carry on an immense correspondence, which radiated between Cairo and New York, St. Petersburg and Bombay, taking in Munich, London, and Madeira,