“Boleslas Gorka has fought a duel with Florent Chapron?” repeated the young girl.

“Yes,” replied her mother.  “I knew that through Hafner.  I did not speak of it to you in order not to worry you with regard to Maud, and I have only awaited her so long to cheer her up in case I should have found her uneasy, and this is how she rewards me for my friendship!  It seems that Gorka took offence at some remark of Chapron’s about Poles, one of those innocent remarks made daily on any nation—­the Italians, the French, the English, the Germans, the Jews—­and which mean nothing....  I repeated the remark in jest to Gorka!....  I leave you to judge....  Is it my fault if, instead of laughing at it, he insulted poor Florent, and if the absurd encounter resulted from it?  And Maud, who writes me that she will never pardon me, that I am a false friend, that I did it expressly to exasperate her husband....  Ah, let her watch her husband, let her lock him up, if he is mad!  And I, who have received them as I have, I, who have made their position for them in Rome, I, who had no other thought than for her just now!....  You hear,” she added, pressing her daughter’s hand with a fervor which was at least sincere, if her words were untruthful, “I forbid you seeing her again or writing to her.  If she does not offer me an apology for her insulting note, I no longer wish to know her.  One is foolish to be so kind!”

For the first time, while listening to that speech, Alba was convinced that her mother was deceiving her.  Since suspicion had entered her heart with regard to her mother, the object until then of such admiration and affection, she had passed through many stages of mistrust.  To talk with the Countess was always to dissipate them.  That was because Madame Steno, apart from her amorous immorality, was of a frank and truthful nature.

It was indeed a customary and known weakness of Florent’s to repeat those witticisms which abound in national epigrams, as mediocre as they are iniquitous.  Alba could recall at least twenty circumstances when the excellent man had uttered such jests at which a sensitive person might take offence.  She would not have thought it utterly impossible that a duel between Gorka and Chapron might have been provoked by an incident of that order.  But Chapron was the brother-in-law of Maitland, of the new friend with whom Madame Steno had become infatuated during the absence of the Polish Count, and what a brother-in-law!  He of whom Dorsenne said:  “He would set Rome on fire to cook an egg for his sister’s husband.”  When Madame Steno announced that duel to her daughter, an invincible and immediate deduction possessed the poor child—­Florent was fighting for his brother-in-law.  And on account of whom, if not of Madame Steno?  The thought would not, however, have possessed her a second in the face of the very plausible explanation made by the Countess, if Alba had not had in her heart a certain proof that her mother was not telling the truth.  The young girl loved Maud as much as she was loved by her.  She knew the sensibility of her faithful and, delicate friend, as that friend knew hers.  For Maud to write her mother a letter which produced an immediate rupture, there must have been some grave reason.