vicinity a creature bent upon realizing a mad vow.  And that creature was the same who had not recoiled before the infamy of an anonymous letter, pretty and sinister Lydia Maitland—­that delicate, that silent young woman with the large brown eyes, always smiling, always impenetrable in the midst of that dull complexion which no emotion, it seemed, had ever tinged.  The failure of her first attempt had exasperated her hatred against her husband and against the Countess to the verge of fury, but a concentrated fury, which was waiting for another occasion to strike, for weeks, patiently, obscurely.  She had thought to wreak her vengeance by the return of Gorka, and in what had it ended?  In freeing Lincoln from a dangerous rival and in imperilling the life of the only being for whom she cared!

The sojourn at the country-seat of her husband’s mistress exasperated Lydia’s hidden anger.  She suffered so that she cried aloud, like an imprisoned animal beating against the bars, when she pictured to herself the happiness which the two lovers would enjoy in the intimacy of the villa, with the beauties of the Venetian scenery surrounding them.  No doubt the wife could provoke a scandal and obtain a divorce, thanks to proofs as indisputable as those with which she had overwhelmed Maud.  It would be sufficient to carry to a lawyer the correspondence in the Spanish escritoire.  But of what use?  She would not be avenged on her husband, to whom a divorce would be a matter of indifference now that he earned as much money as he required, and she would lose her brother.  In vain Lydia told herself that, warned as Alba had been by her letter, her doubt of Madame Steno’s misconduct would no longer be impossible.  She was convinced by innumerable trifling signs that the Contessina still doubted, and then she concluded: 

“It is there that the blow must be struck.  But how?”

Yes.  How?  There was at the service of hatred in that delicate woman, in appearance oblivious of worldliness, that masculine energy in decision which is to be found in all families of truly military origin.  The blood of Colonel Chapron stirred within her and gave her the desire to act.  By dint of pondering upon those reasonings, Lydia ended by elaborating one of those plans of a simplicity really infernal, in which she revealed what must be called the genius of evil, for there was so much clearness in the conception and of villainy in the execution.  She assured herself that it was unnecessary to seek any other stage than the studio for the scene she meditated.  She knew too well the fury of passion by which Madame Steno was possessed to doubt that, as soon as she was alone with Lincoln, she did not refuse him those kisses of which their correspondence spoke.  The snare to be laid was very simple.  It required that Alba and Lydia should be in some post of observation while the lovers believed themselves alone, were it only for a moment.  The position of the places