"Duty to me!" exclaimed the Count, vehemently. "I thought you wise as well as good. You are a fool, weak girl, and have suffered a treacherous knave to impose upon you by some idle tale:--but he shall dearly rue it. Time for prayer and shrift is all that he shall have 'twixt now and eternity." "He is my husband," answered Adelaide; "and--" "Go, make your widow's weeds then," cried her father; "for no husband will you have after to-morrow's dawn." "Yet, listen," she said, in an imploring tone; "condemn not before you have heard. He is guiltless of having deceived me, if I have been deceived: he told me no false tale, for all he said was that he loved me--and that he does; he pleaded no excuse of duty--" "Who, then?" demanded her father; "who then, I say? Ah! I can guess right well; that false priest, who has always been the bitterest enemy of me and mine. Is it so, girl?--Answer, is it so?" "If you mean Father George," replied Adelaide, slowly, "you are right. He bade me tell you the fact, if it became absolutely necessary to do so; but oh, my father! you do him wrong. He is not an enemy to you and yours--far, very far--" "Out upon you, wretched girl!" exclaimed the Count, growing more and more furious every moment. "I know him but too well; and for what he has done I will have bitter retribution. I will lay his abbey in smoking ruins for his sake; but first he shall see the results of his dark intrigues on those he has attempted to force into high stations. He shall see the blood of his beggar brother's child stain the axe, as he has well deserved--ay, and he shall have notice that if he would ever see his face again it must be ere to-morrow. He may come to shrive him for the block, if he will; but I swear, by all I hold holy! that daring traitor shall never see another sun set than that which has this day arisen." "Hold, hold, my father!" cried Adelaide; "first, for your daughter's sake; for, did you do the act you threaten, the blow must fall on her, not him alone. Be sure that she would not survive him long. Nay, look not scornful, for it is too true; but, if not for her sake, for your own, pause but three days, both to give your better spirit time to act, and to allow yourself to judge with better knowledge. Oh, pause, my father! Bring not on your head the weight of such a crime; think what men will say of you--think how the eye of God will judge you--think what torture your own heart will inflict--how memory will ever show the spirit of the dead reproaching you, and calling you to judgment--think what it will seem in your own eyes, when passion has passed away, to know that you have murdered in your own stronghold your daughter's husband, and, with the same blow, your own child too."