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....