"Alas! could you but comprehend how my heart sympathises with your most trifling sorrow; how each tear wrung from your eyes seems to fall like molten lead upon my brain; you would be able to understand the cold-blooded hardihood with which you reproach me! Ah! did you only know what a burden life has seemed to me since I discovered how valueless and unimportant I was to you, you could far better enter into my eager desire to secure your happiness, even at the risk of my own life, which was hateful and distasteful to me; and that I made no further attempts to achieve my design was attributable to the increased precautions adopted by the prince to secure his safety." "Enough, enough; you fill me with horror! and now, what am I to do?--you have confessed your crime----" "It matters little to me what is done now." "You cannot for one instant suppose I can keep near me the person who has thrice endeavoured to deprive my husband of life--whose hand has been raised against that good and generous man who has even feigned madness to shield me from suspicion?" "Yet you desire the death of this good and generous husband as ardently as you ever did!" "Silence! I command." "And should he die, you would espouse M. de Morville!" For a moment Paula remained as though struck dumb by these fearful words, but quickly recovering herself she indignantly replied,-- "And by what right do you presume to scrutinise my thoughts? Is it any reason for my wishing the death of M. de Hansfeld that such an event would restore me to freedom? or that, in my eagerness to be free, I should even sanction any murderous attempt upon his life?" "Still, I say, and I repeat it, you do desire the death of M. de Hansfeld." "Begone, begone! instantly leave me!" "Oh, pardon, godmother! pardon!" cried Iris, falling at the feet of Paula; then in a voice half-choked by convulsive sobs and sighs, she continued, "I am a guilty, sinful creature, for in all I have done I have acted with cool and calculated premeditation, knowing full well both the extent and consequences of my crime; but I again assert that I know no good worth caring for but your happiness; no evil to be dreaded but your misery, all other considerations are as nothing with me; why, then, drive me from you? was it for my own advancement, or interest, that I sought to commit the deeds which inspire you with so much horror? was it not you--absolutely and entirely you, I endeavoured to save and to serve?" "But to serve me by such frightful means was to render me guilty as yourself!"