"Count," she said with a great effort, but in a calm and sharp voice, "you bring strange accusations against me, you speak in the voice of a judge. I do not understand you, nor do I recognize your right." And exerting all her powers of will, she raised her eyes and gazed firmly into the count's face. He drew himself to his full height, and stepping close up to her, and raising his hand, he said in a low voice which vibrated through the room: "I do not speak from suspicion, I bring an accusation against you which it would be easy for me to prove; I speak as a judge, because if I would, I might be your judge, Antonia von Steinfeld." She gazed at him with horror, all her composure left her; and broken down she sank into a chair. "I might," proceeded the count, "be the judge of that unnatural daughter who forsook her old sick mother, a worthy lady who had educated her, by making great sacrifices, to follow the adventurous life of an actress, who stole her mother's last treasure, the title-deeds of her small estate, and whilst she lived in wild dissipation left that unhappy mother, who would not face the shame and publicity of bringing her to justice, to suffer from want, until sorrow broke her heart. I might be the judge of the worthless creature who sank deeper and deeper, until she was punished for a fresh robbery, upon a young man whom she had ensnared, by two years' imprisonment; who then as an actress travelled through most of the little towns of Bohemia and Galicia, until she succeeded in finding a man but little better than herself, who gave her his name, and placed her in a position that enabled her to continue on a large scale the course she had before commenced. I might be the judge of the murderess who planned in cold blood a horrible death for a pure and innocent girl. Do you think, wretch!" he added--and his voice sounded like distant thunder--"do you think it would cost me more than a word to strip the false spangled veil from the hideousness of your past life and give you up to the abhorrence and scorn of the world? Do you think," he cried, standing close before her, with flashing eyes, "that it would burden my conscience, by a drop of surer poison than that you placed in the veins of an innocent creature, to free the world from your sin-laden existence?" As the count spoke, the young woman had sunk down lower and lower; as he ended she lay at his feet, her eyes stared at him as at some supernatural appearance, horror and hopeless anguish were depicted in her face. The abbé looked with a mixture of pity and abhorrence at the broken-down creature. The count gazed at her in silence.