Tortures of a guilty conscience, who can paint you in colours sufficiently strong! Who can endure you without sinking at last beneath your weight! The phantoms, which in his disordered moments terrified the mind of Ethelbert, presented themselves in a thousand different forms. Many of them were totally unintelligible to me, as I was not fully instructed in the history of his past errors; nor was I at all inclined to inquire further into events, whose consequences sufficiently assured me, that their knowledge would afford me no sources of consolation. Count Venosta was at this period compelled to be often absent from the Castle of Sargans. His renewed connection with Ethelbert made it incumbent on him to become the General of those troops, whom their master’s infirmity would otherwise have left without a leader. Such preparations therefore, as were necessary for our safety, were made by the sore orders of my uncle; and alas! every succeeding day made us feel with an added certainty, that no precautions could be superfluous. Our dreaded enemy, the fierce and incensed Donat, was now daily expected to appear. I knew well his animosity against myself; and it is not to be wondered at, that in spite of the consciousness of my innocence, I shuddered when I heard of his approach. But my anxiety was not to be compared with the horror, which shook Count Ethelbert’s frame, whenever he heard Donat mentioned. He no longer recollected, that he was his own son; he only saw in him Lucretia’s offspring and avenger; and often when his bewildered brain pictured him present, did he fly for shelter to my arms, and entreat me to save him from Donat’s imaginary dagger. What I endured at this period, is not to be believed! My friend Edith had often advised me to quit my frantic husband; and so excruciating were my sufferings, that I probably should have taken her counsel, had not compassion in the first moments of my re-union with the wretched man forced from me the inconsiderate promise, “that I never would abandon him through life, but that whatever fate was allotted to him should be shared by me;” a promise, which I had confirmed by too solemn an oath, and on which Ethelbert relied with too much confidence, to admit of my departing from it without his consent.