“How her cheeks burn!  And you pay visits in this state.  It is very venturesome!  Rue Leopardi,” she called to the coachman, “quickly.”

The carriage rolled away, and Madame Gorka continued to press the tiny hands of Lydia, to whom she gave the tender name, so ironical under the circumstances, of “Poor little one!” Maud was one of those women like whom England produces many, for the honor of that healthy and robust British civilization, who are at once all energy and all goodness.  As large and stout as Lydia was slender, she would rather have borne her to her bed in her vigorous arms than to have abandoned her in the troubled state in which she had surprised her.  Not less practical and, as her compatriots say, as matter-of-fact as she was charitable, she began to question her friend on the symptoms which had preceded that attack, when with astonishment she saw that altered face contract, tears gushing from the closed eyes, and the fragile form convulsed by sobs.  Lydia had a nervous attack caused by anxiety, by the fresh disappointment of Boleslas’s absence from home, and no doubt, too, by the gentleness with which Maud addressed her, and tearing her handkerchief with her white teeth, she moaned: 

“No, I am not ill.  But it is that thought which I can not bear.  No, I can not.  Ah, it is maddening!” And turning toward her companion, she in her turn pressed her hands, saying:  “But you know nothing!  You suspect nothing!  It is that which maddens me, when I see you tranquil, calm, happy, as if the minutes were not valuable, every one, to-day, to you as well as to me.  For if one is my brother, the other is your husband; and you love him.  You must love him, to have pardoned him for what you have pardoned him.”

She had spoken in a sort of delirium, brought about by her extreme nervous excitement, and she had uttered, she, usually so dissembling, her very deepest thought.  She did not think she was giving Madame Gorka any information by that allusion, so direct, to the liaison of Boleslas with Madame Steno.  She was persuaded, as was entire Rome, that Maud knew of her husband’s infidelities, and that she tolerated them by one of those heroic sacrifices which maternity justifies.  How many women have immolated thus their wifely pride to maintain the domestic relation which the father shall at least not desert officially!  All Rome was mistaken, and Lydia Maitland was to have an unexpected proof.  Not a suspicion that such an intrigue could unite her husband with the mother of her best friend had ever entered the thoughts of Boleslas’s wife.  But to account for that, it is necessary to admit, as well, and to comprehend the depth of innocence of which, notwithstanding her twenty-six years, the beautiful and healthy Englishwoman, with her eyes so clear, so frank, was possessed.

She was one of those persons who command the respect of the boldest of men, and before whom the most dissolute women exercised care.  She might have seen the freedom of Madame Steno without being disillusioned.  She had only a liking for acquaintances and positive conversation.  She was very intellectual, but without any desire to study character.