o have it one
rather than the other in that family. I should reproach myself all my
life for not having tried every means." They were in the last room, and
Baron Hafner was just fastening the strings of an album of drawings,
when the conviction took possession of the young man in a definite
manner. Alba Steno, who still maintained silence, looked at him again
with eyes which revealed the struggle of her interest for him and of her
wounded pride. She longed, without doubt, at the moment they were
about to separate, to ask him, according to their intimate and charming
custom, when they should meet again. He did not heed her--any more than
he did the other pair of eyes which told him to be more prudent, and
which were those of the Baron; any more than he did the observation of
Madame Gorka, who, having remarked the ill-humor of Alba, was seeking
the cause, which she had long since divined was the heart of the young
girl; any more than the attitude of Madame Maitland, whose eyes at times
shot fire equal to her brother's gentleness. He took the latter by the
arm, and said to him aloud:

"I should like to have your opinion on a small portrait I have noticed
in the other room, my dear Chapron." Then, when they were before the
canvas which had served as a pretext for the aside, he continued, in a
low voice: "I heard very strange news this morning. Do you know Boleslas
Gorka is in Rome unknown to his wife?"

"That is indeed strange," replied Maitland's brother-in-law, adding
simply, after a silence: "Are you certain of it?"

"As certain as that we are here," said Dorsenne. "One of my friends,
Marquis de Montfanon, met him this morning."

A fresh silence ensued between the two, during which Julien felt that
the arm upon which he rested trembled. Then they joined the party, while
Florent said aloud: "It is an excellent piece of painting, which has,
unfortunately, been revarnished too much."

"May I have done right!" thought Julien. "He understood me."

CHAPTER III. BOLESLAS GORKA

Hardly ten minutes had passed since Dorsenne had spoken as he had to
Florent Chapron, and already the imprudent novelist began to wonder
whether it would not have been wiser not to interfere in any way in an
adventure in which his intervention was of the least importance.

The apprehension of an immediate drama which had possessed him, for the
first time, after the conversation with Montfanon, for the second time,
in a stronger manner, by