Alba obeyed the perfidious request absently, and applied her eye to the aperture.  The author of the anonymous letters had chosen her moment only too well.  As soon as the door of the studio was closed, the Countess rose to approach Lincoln.  She entwined around the young man’s neck her arms, which gleamed through the transparent sleeves of her summer gown, and she kissed with greedy lips his eyes and mouth.  Lydia, who had retained one of the girl’s hands in hers, felt that hand tremble convulsively.  A hunter who hears rustle the foliage of the thicket through which should pass the game he is awaiting, does not experience a joy more complete.  Her snare was successful.  She said to her unhappy victim: 

“What ails you?  How you tremble!”

And she essayed to push her away in order to put herself in her place.  Alba, whom the sight of her mother embracing Lincoln with those passionate kisses inspired at that moment with an inexplicable horror, had, however, enough presence of mind in the midst of her suffering to understand the danger of that mother whom she had surprised thus, clasping in the arms of a guilty mistress—­whom?—­the husband of the very woman speaking to her, who asked her why she trembled with fear, who would look through that same hole to see that same tableau!....  In order to prevent what she believed would be to Lydia a terrible revelation, the courageous child had one of those desperate thoughts such as immediate peril inspires.  With her free hand she struck the glass so violently that it was shivered into atoms, cutting her fingers and her wrist.

Lydia exclaimed, angrily: 

“Miserable girl, you did that purposely!”

The fierce creature as she uttered these words, rushed toward the large hole now made in the panel—­too late!

She only saw Lincoln erect in the centre of the studio, looking toward the broken window, while the Countess, standing a few paces from him, exclaimed: 

“My daughter!  What has happened to my daughter?  I recognized her voice.”

“Do not alarm yourself,” replied Lydia, with atrocious sarcasm.  “Alba broke the pane to give you a warning.”

“But, is she hurt?” asked the mother.

“Very slightly,” replied the implacable woman with the same accent of irony, and she turned again toward the Contessina with a glance of such rancor that, even in the state of confusion in which the latter was plunged by that which she had surprised, that glance paralyzed her with fear.  She felt the same shudder which had possessed her dear friend Maud, in that same studio, in the face of the sinister depths of that dark soul, suddenly exposed.  She had not time to precisely define her feelings, for already her mother was beside her, pressing her in her arms—­in those very arms which Alba had just seen twined around the neck of a lover—­while that same mouth showered kisses upon him.  The moral shock was so great that the young girl fainted.