However, the novelist was not altogether right.

Boleslas's infidelity was of too long standing for the woman passionately, religiously loyal, who was his wife, not to have suffered by it.

But there was an abyss between such sufferings and the intuition of a determined fact such as that which Lydia had just mentioned, and such a suspicion was so far from Maud's thoughts that her companion's words only aroused in her astonishment at the mysterious danger of which Lydia's troubles was a proof more eloquent still than her words.
"Your brother?
My husband ?" she said.

"I do not understand you." "Naturally," replied Lydia, "he has hidden all from you, as Florent hid all from me.

Well! They are going to fight a duel, and to-morrow morning....