It was a dreadful sight; and, after looking on it for a few moments in astonishment and horror, I turned my aching eyes towards the lovely girl that had conducted me to such a strange and awful exhibition. She, too, was gazing at it with that sort of fixed intensity of look, which told that her mind gathered there materials for strong and all-absorbing thoughts. "In the name of Heaven!" cried I, "who has done this?" "I!" answered she, with a strange degree of calmness;--"I did it!" "And what on earth could tempt you," I continued, "to so bloody and horrible a crime?" "You shall hear," she replied. "That man was my confessor. He took advantage of his power over my mind--he won me to all that he wished--and then--he turned to another--fairer, perhaps, and equally weak. I discovered his treachery, but I heeded it the less, as I had seen you, and, for the first time, knew what love was; but I warned him never to approach me again, if he would escape that Spanish revenge whose power he ought to have known. He came, this very night--perhaps from the arms of another,--and he yet dared to talk to me of passion and of love! thinking me still weak enough to yield to him. Oh! with what patience I was endued not to slay him then! I bade him go forth, and never to approach me again. He became enraged--he threatened to betray me--to publish my shame--and he is--what he is!" There was a dreadful pause: she had worked herself up by the details to a pitch of almost frenzied rage; and, gazing upon the body of him that had wronged her with a flushed cheek and flashing eyes, she seemed as if she would have smote him again. "The story is told," cried she at length; "and now, if you love me, as you have said, you must carry him forth, and cast him into the great fosse of the city. Ha! you will not! You hate me!--you despise me! Then I must speak another language. You shall! Yes, you shall! or both you and I will join him in the grave!" and, drawing a poniard from her bosom, she placed herself between me and the door. "And do you think me so great a coward," replied I, hastily, "to be frightened into doing what I disapprove, by a poniard in the hand of a woman? No, lady, no," I continued, more kindly, believing her, as I did, to be disordered in mind by the intensity of her feelings; "I pity you from my heart--I pity you for the base injuries you have suffered; and even, though I cannot but condemn the crime you have committed, I would do much, very much, to soothe, to calm, to heal your wounded spirit; but----"