—“At hearing this declaration,” continued my uncle, “I could not restrain a smile; so impossible did it appear to me at that time, that a situation should ever occur, which could induce me to force the heiress of all my possessions on the noblest and most powerful man on earth.—But from that moment Ethelbert never missed an opportunity or working himself into my heart. The services, which he rendered me, increased in number so rapidly, and were of such material consequence; and his countenance bore so plainly the melancholy impression of hopeless love, that I could not avoid wishing to gratify him with your hand. I now began to make all possible enquiries respecting his former marriage. Proof upon proof met me at every step, that he had acted by me with candour; I daily received fresh assurances, that he had indeed been married to an Italian heiress; but that his wife was dead, and his son richly provided for. The last and most essential service which he rendered me, the delivering me from the chains of the Abbot of St. Gall, put the finishing-hand to my resolution in his favour. I solicited him to become your husband; cursed be the hour, in which I did so! Ah! what did it avail, that Ethelbert’s wife was no more, since her death only left him at liberty to contract an union with one, who has with every hour had fresh cause to lament the moment, in which that union was formed?”— —“And are you then quite certain,” interrupted his wife (for Edith was now the Countess Venosta) “that when Ethelbert became Urania’s husband, his hand was _really_ free?—Oh! Leopold, how much have we all reason to lament, that your own guileless nature should have made you so unwilling to suspect, that others were deceivers! that even when your suspicions were so justly excited, your inclination to find them groundless should have so lightly made you abandon them, and resume your good opinion of a man, whose only talent consisted in concealing his vices with dexterity!—Alas! alas! even from the grave thy voice, unfortunate Lucretia, calls Ethelbert a murderer! Soon may the curse, which you breathed against him in your last moments, fall on the tyrant’s head; but far be its accomplishment from her, whom your unjust fury joined with him in the malediction. Urania is guiltless of your sufferings; surely had not frenzy and despair made you deaf to all conviction, you could not have resisted the arguments, which I advanced in proof of her unconscious innocence!”— Struck dumb with astonishment stood my uncle and myself, and gazed in silence on Edith. Her arms were crossed upon her bosom; her eyes were raised towards Heaven; the tears streamed down her cheeks. She replied not to the anxious enquiries, which her extraordinary agitation and incoherent exclamations at length compelled us to make.