"I shall to-morrow quit the world, to bury myself in a convent. Dishonoured, odious to my family and to myself, such is the deplorable condition to which I am reduced by listening to you. Still I will expect you to-night. In my despair, I seek new tortures: come, and avow to me that your heart disowned the protestations which your lips have made to me; or come to confirm them by your sympathy, which alone can soften the harshness of my destiny. As there may, however, be some danger in this meeting, after what has passed between you and my father, be sure you are accompanied by a friend. Although you have rendered life worthless to me, I cannot cease to interest myself in thine. "LEONORA." While the Count perused this letter, which he read over several times, his imagination depicted the situation of Leonora, in colours more sombre even than the reality, and he was deeply affected. He bitterly reflected on his past conduct: reason, probity, honour, all whose laws he had violated in the phrenzy of his passion, now regained their empire in his breast. The blindness which selfishness inflicts upon its victims was dissipated; and as the fevered convalescent blushes for the follies which, in the access of his disorder, he has committed, so was Belflor ashamed of the meanness and artifice of which he had been guilty to satisfy his lust. "What have I done?" he cried; "wretch that I am, what demon has possessed me? I promised Leonora to espouse her, and called on Heaven to witness for the lie; I falsely told her that the King had designed me for another; lying, treachery, perjury,--I have hesitated at nothing to corrupt innocence itself. What madness! Oh! had I used, to control it, the efforts I have made to gratify my passion! To seduce one of whose beauty and virtue I was unworthy, to abandon her to the wrath of her relations, whom I have equally dishonoured, and to plunge her in misery as a return for the happiness she bestowed on me,--what ingratitude! Ought I not then to repair the injury I have inflicted? Yes, I ought, and I will; my hand shall at the altar fulfil the pledge I gave for it. Who shall oppose me in so righteous a determination? Should her tenderness for me at all prejudice her virtue? No, I know too well what that cost me to vanquish. She yielded less to my love than to her confidence in my integrity, and to my vows of fidelity. But, on the other hand, if I resolve on this marriage, I make a great sacrifice,--I, who may pretend to the heiresses of the richest and most noble houses in the kingdom, shall I content myself with the daughter of a respectable gentleman, of small fortune? What will they think of me at court? They will say that I have made a splendid alliance indeed!"