Yet his good fortune so ordained it, that the striking this important blow, was still delayed from time to time: Hilarius too was of opinion, that the fittest time for making the long-meditated attack would be immediately after the Count’s decease, when the want of lineal heirs must necessarily produce much confusion among the numerous claimants, and when in all probability the Castle’s inhabitants would be found entirely off their guard. The impatient robbers were by no means satisfied with this opinion: they were for making the attempt immediately; but unless they could convince Hilarius, their opposition availed them nothing. He consented to their taking possession of the Donat-Fortress; but he took care to keep it well locked and bolted, so that the supposed spectres could not by any means invade the inhabited part of the Castle, till it should be his own good will and pleasure to admit them. It was at this period, that the Countesses of Werdenberg were acknowledged by Count Frederick, and were immediately considered by the Monk as obstacles to his designs. Looking upon Constantia as destined to the veil, his whole undivided hatred was monopolized by Ida; and he never rested, till he had ruined her in her uncle’s good opinion, nay (by means of her mysterious flight) in the good opinion of the world. I have already related, in what manner he delivered her into the power of the robbers; who gratified him doubly, first by relieving him from a person whose absence he wished, and whose blood he was not quite villain enough to shed with his own hands, and secondly by rewarding him for the possession of so lovely a girl with a considerable sum of money. As to what became afterwards of the unhappy Ida, that was a matter of little interest to Father Hilarius: but it would have been a matter of very _great_ interest, if he had guest Randolf’s intention of giving himself a legal claim to the inheritance of Sargans by the possession of her hand, and of reinstating the detested Ida hereafter in those rights, of which the Monk had taken so much trouble to deprive her. The daily presents, which Frederick’s generosity bestowed on his spiritual guide, made the latter by no means anxious to see the moment of his patron’s dissolution. He had forwarded to the utmost of his power Elizabeth’s marriage, not only on account of the advantages promised both to himself and his Convent by the superannuated lover, whenever this union should be accomplished, but also from being persuaded, that the affectionate care of such a wife would be giving the Count a new lease for many years of existence.