She had drawn Lydia up and away into a niche in the wall, thus gaining at least some shelter from the eyes of the servants, many of whom were still busy everywhere up and down the terraces with the preparations for the illumination. There was a stone bench with a stone table in front inside the niche. Lydia sank down upon the bench, laid her face, covered by her hands, against the edge of the table, and murmured her miserable confession of guilt in a voice which was scarcely audible, owing to her constant weeping and sobbing. She had, she whined out, found out by questioning the servants that the letter had not been sent, which Erna had on the morning in question written beneath the plantain tree, and which, she assumed, was certainly addressed to Agatha; and she had, moreover, learned from Agatha--who evidently suspected nothing--that she had received no letter just before her departure from home. Then, passing through Erna's rooms, she had seen her blotting-book lying about, unlocked, as she had been astonished to notice. Then she had been unable to resist the temptation of trying if the letter was still there. The letter had been there--a sort of dizziness had come over her, and-- "I said to myself," she went on, "that you have no secrets from Agatha, that you were likely to have written to her what you felt towards Bertram, whether you loved him--I required to know it--my future, my happiness, my salvation--all, all depended upon that one question. Have pity on a poor wretched woman whom jealousy made a criminal--against her own child, too! for I have ever loved you as my own child, ever, and would gladly have sacrificed all for you, all, only not this--the trial was too much for my strength." Then Lydia in her self-abasement and grief wept bitterly. Again Erna felt it strange that she did not spring up from her place beside the weeping old woman, did not leave her alone with her silliness and her lies; that she could listen to her exaggerated and sentimental twaddle without positive disgust. There was something stirring within her that she was frightened at herself--something almost like a wish that, this time, Lydia might not be lying. Lydia noticed through the veil of tears in which she had wrapt herself that Erna was accepting her confession much more favourably than she had dared to hope. This gave her courage enough to pursue to the utmost the advantage thus already gained.