In the anxiety of his heart Count Ethelbert made proposals, which my uncle (who had scarcely less cause for anxiety) judged it imprudent entirely to reject. A negotiation was entered into; an alliance was concluded against Donat between Ethelbert and Count Leopold; and the wretched Urania was the victim sacrificed to their mutual fears. Almighty Heaven! the man who had deceived my uncle, imprisoned Edith, murdered Lucretia, and branded myself with shame, this man was I obliged for the second time to call by the name of husband.—It was in vain, that I resisted; that I wept, and knelt at the feet of my uncle. He bade me remember, that I had for many years lived with Ethelbert as his wife, and that should I go to my grave without a legal claim to that title, it would leave such a stain upon the family honour, as all the waters of the Rhine and Danube could never wash away.—Nor was this reflection without its weight in my own balance—to be handed down to posterity as the licentious votary of pleasure! “Urania Venosta, the concubine of the Count of Carlsheim!” was such the description, by which I must be known in after ages? As the hateful thought glanced upon my imagination, I recoiled with horror; a crimson blush suffused my cheeks, and the blood as it rushed through my veins, seemed boiling.—And yet to prevent this odious image from being realized, there existed no possible means except the consenting to give the most inhuman of men a second legal claim to torture and insult me!—Yet still did I resist; and still did the dreaded Donat advance towards us. Count Venosta’s persuasions became every hour more urgent. Entreaties, threats, anger, kindness, were employed alternately to obtain my unwilling consent.—Edith felt for me, and aided not her husband; but she felt too for the dangers of her situation, and shuddered involuntarily at the bare mention of Donat’s name. Her silent terrors affected me to the very soul: I was not insensible to apprehensions on my own account: Ethelbert’s arms at least afforded me a refuse from disgrace: I yielded, and with my eyes open doomed myself to a life of wilful suffering. Yes! I became again the wife of Ethelbert!—Expect not from me a circumstantial account of my first interview with a man, whose crimes had now made him as much the object of my aversion, as he had once been the object of my love. The news of his approach made me shrink with terror! I painted to myself this imperious tyrant in the most frightful colours, which imagination could supply; but in the present instance, as had been the case on many former ones, I was deceived in my expectations. It’s true, the scene which I had to go through was a most painful one, but very different from that for which I had prepared myself.