"Perfectly so!" "You likewise informed me that, thanks to the extreme liberality of M. de Hansfeld, the greater part of his immense fortune would, at his death, revert to you----" "Hold! miserable girl! you make me chill with horror! These repeated attempts on his life then----" Without taking any notice of her mistress's remark, Iris continued,-- "Shortly after your marriage your former dejection of spirits returned with redoubled force. I hesitated no longer; and one evening, at Trieste, unperceived by any person, I put into a cup of milk----" "Monster! I will hear no more!" "Nay, godmother, I had taken my precautions too carefully to dread discovery, and even had I not escaped detection, none but myself could have been implicated; and besides, I should have voluntarily declared I was the sole culprit, and that no living soul was privy to my guilt." "Horrible! and did you not shudder at the enormity of the crime you meditated?--did no whisper of conscience remind you how foul a deed you were about to commit?" "Godmother, you desired to be released from your marriage-vows." "How knew you that?--did I ever say so? Nay, I never even allowed such an idea to enter my mind." "You repented having surrendered your liberty; my intention was to restore it to you." "Have you, then, no notion of the difference between good and evil?" "Oh! yes. Good is that which renders you happy. Evil whatever makes you wretched." "Merciful Heavens! who would ever have believed such wild and savage enthusiasm could be found in our days and in a civilised country? And your hand trembled not? and you could calmly and coolly premeditate a crime as black as that of murder? and, still more, how could you renew your diabolical attacks undismayed by former failures?" "After my first attempt, your melancholy became greater than ever. You frequently complained to me of what you had to endure from the inequality of the prince's temper, and many a time have I heard you curse the hour in which you were induced to consent to your ill-assorted marriage; and then, when most under the influence of gloom and depression of spirits, you have wept bitterly, and called upon death to free you from your misery. This was more than I could bear, and a second time I determined to effect the death of him who occasioned your sufferings. I planned my attack one night that we passed at a lone inn, and I contrived to gain admittance into the chamber of my intended victim by climbing up to the balcony belonging to his sleeping-apartment, the window of which opened into it, but had been left partly open to admit the air; this window I managed to close after me as I made my retreat after this second failure." "Impossible that one so young could act with so much cold-blooded hardihood! I cannot, I will not believe the evidence of my own senses!"