On the following day the Countess was frightened, believing that the girl was really ill. In truth she was ill,--so that the doctor who visited her declared that she must be treated with great care. She was harassed in spirit,--so the doctor said,--and must be taken away, so that she might be amused. The Countess was frightened, but still was resolute. She not only loved her daughter,--but loved no other human being on the face of the earth. Her daughter was all that she had to bind her to the world around her. But she declared to herself again and again that it would be better that her daughter should die than live and be married to the tailor. It was a case in which persecution even to the very gate of the grave would be wise and warrantable,--if by such persecution this odious, monstrous marriage might be avoided. And she did believe that persecution would avail at last. If she were only steady in her resolve, the girl would never dare to demand the right to leave her mother's house and walk off to the church to be married to Daniel Thwaite, without the countenance of a single friend. The girl's strength was not of that nature. But were she, the Countess, to yield an inch, then this evil might come upon them. She had heard that young people can always beat their parents if they be sufficiently obdurate. Parents are soft-hearted to their children, and are prone to yield. And so would she have been soft-hearted, if the interests concerned had been less important, if the deviation from duty had been less startling, or the union proposed less monstrous and disgraceful. But in this case it behoved her to be obdurate,--even though it should be to the very gates of the grave. "I swear to you," she said, "that the day of your marriage to Daniel Thwaite shall be the day of my death."