Roseline trembled, turned pale, and to the earliest opportunity of withdrawing, not daring to trust Edwin with her fears, or risk feeing the prisoner for some hours, lest her agitation should betray suspicions of she knew not what, but in which her terrified imagination confirmed all the hints her maid had given her.--Marry the Baron!--it was a thought so unnatural, so repugnant to every wish, every feeling of her heart,--so inimical to the ideas she had formed of happiness, that it was not to be endured.--She wept, wrung her hands, recollected herself, and again sunk into despondency; but at all events resolved to acquire resolution to go through the interview with her father, and give him such answers as should convince him an union with his friend (if such was the painful subject he had to communicate) would make her the veriest wretch on earth. Her heart was no longer in her own possession, but that she must not dare to avow; all therefore that she could determine was, to refuse the Baron, and to love the prisoner, and him only, to the end of her life. These important points settled for the present, gave to her perturbed spirits momentary relief, and enabled her to join the family without creating any suspicion that they were unusually depressed; when, however, she followed her brother into the prisoner's room, it was with the utmost difficulty she maintained any command over her feelings; but, unwilling to alarm of distress her unfortunate lover, till necessity compelled her to acquaint him with her sorrows, the only difference her painful struggles produced was an addition of gentle tenderness to her manner; and, though she had often thought her affection could admit of no increase, yet, at this moment, he was, if possible, still move beloved, still more endeared by the ten thousand uncommon ties which had so wonderfully tended to unite hearts that appeared to be under the directing will of Providence. The next morning, previously to seeing her father, Roseline once more ventured to question Audrey, and so earnestly begged she would explain all she meant by the hints she had given respecting the Baron, that poor Audrey, softened almost to tears by seeing her young lady really distressed, no longer remembered her former petulance, but readily complied with her request, though, in fact, all she knew amounted to little more than she had already told;--namely, that the Baron came to look for a wife to carry home, and shut up in his old castle;--that the Baron's servant had informed her he was in love with her young lady;--that Sir Philip liked him for a son-in-law, and they were soon to be married:--"But, Christ Jesus, miss! he is such an infamy man, he would no more mind ordering one of his vassals to be thrown into a fiery furnace than my master would killing a pig; and Pedro says, he ought to have been put into the spettacle court fifty and fifty times, for his entregens and fornications; for, before his first wife died--"