Conrad had dispatched messengers on all sides in pursuit of Ida, as soon as he received the news of her flight, which Count Frederick transmitted to him without delay. It seems, that what Father Hilarius dreaded with so much reason, had actually taken place at the Castle of Torrenburg. No sooner was the first burst of passion over, than the Count’s justice made him resolve to give his accused niece a personal hearing—the morning had scarcely dawned, when he sought her apartments. Her favourite attendant was ordered to apprize her mistress of his approach: great was his astonishment, when the maid returned extremely agitated, and informed him, that Ida was no where to be found. Father Hilarius was immediately sent for; and his explanation of Ida’s motives for flight of course was such, as served greatly to increase his patron’s indignation, and throw a still deeper shade upon the character and conduct of the fugitive. Elizabeth’s bridegroom had disappeared, immediately after rejecting her hand at the altar; Ida was now become equally invisible: it required no great ingenuity to connect these two events together. Nothing could appear more probable, than that Ida had eloped with Henry, and that she was gone to form an union built upon the ruined happiness of her best friends, and to exult at having duped those, whose good-natured simplicity had prevented them from suspecting her designs.—Count Frederick’s generous heart was shocked beyond expression, when he thus saw the offences of his niece presented before him in such gigantic enormity. —“Monstrous!” he exclaimed! “inconceivable! first she plunges a dagger in the breast of her benefactor, by robbing him of the woman whom he adored; next she stabs her dearest friend to the heart by seducing away the bridegroom, into whose arms she had herself delivered her! now then she believes, that her infernal work is complete; she knows well, that all ideas of an union between me and Elizabeth are prevented for ever; she doubts not, that vexation and disappointed love will soon conduct me to the grave; and then she means to divide my rich inheritance with the partner of her iniquities, the false capricious perjured Montfort!”—