he," she had thought, glancing at her husband with a horrible tremor
of hope.... And now she had the proof, the indisputable proof, that her
plot for vengeance was to terminate in the danger of another. Of what
other?

The letter and will made by Florent disclosed to her the threat of a
fatal duel suspended over the head which was the dearest to her. So she
had driven to a tragical encounter the only being whom she loved.... The
disappointment of the heart in which palpitated the wild energies of a
bestial atavism was so sudden, so acute, so dolorous, that she uttered
an inarticulate cry, leaning upon her brother's desk, and, in the face
of those sheets of paper which had revealed so much, she repeated:

"He is going to fight a duel! He!... And I am the cause!".... Then,
returning the letters and the will to the drawer, she closed it and
rose, saying aloud:

"No. It shall not be. I will prevent it, if I have to cast myself
between them. I do not wish it! I do not wish it!"

It was easy to utter such words. But the execution of them was less
easy. Lydia knew it, for she had no sooner uttered that vow than she
wrung her hands in despair--those weak hands which Madame Steno compared
in one of her letters to the paws of a monkey, the fingers were so
supple and so long--and she uttered this despairing cry: "But how?"....
which so many criminals have uttered before the issue, unexpected and
fatal to them, of their shrewdest calculations. The poet has sung it in
the words which relate the story of all our faults, great and small:

"The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to plague us."

It is necessary that the belief in the equity of an incomprehensible
judge be well grounded in us, for the strongest minds are struck by a
sinister apprehension when they have to brave the chance of a misfortune
absolutely merited. The remembrance of the soothsayer's prediction
suddenly occurred to Lydia. She uttered another cry, rubbing her hands
like a somnambulist. She saw her brother's blood flowing.... No,
the duel should not take place! But how to prevent it? How-how? she
repeated. Florent was not at home. She could, therefore, not implore
him. If he should return, would there still be time? Lincoln was not at
home. Where was he? Perhaps at a rendezvous with Madame Steno.

The image of that handsome idol of love clasped in the painter's arms,
plunged in the abyss of intoxication which her ardent le