"Nay, my child, it must not be," replied her father. "I do believe you have acted for the best; but now you are bound in duty to another. Stay with your husband. I have done him wrong; but he loves you deeply, I am sure; and you shall teach him, by your gentle tenderness, to forget your father's faults.--Adieu, my child! May God bless and protect you!" As he spoke, the Count of Ehrenstein strode forward, and took him by both the hands. "William," he said, "William, do you repent of what you have done?" "From my heart and soul, Ferdinand," replied his brother. "Nay, more, I have ever repented bitterly. I have found that one crime, besides its own remorse, brings a thousand others to be repented of. The things I have done have haunted me by day and night: they have embittered life; and I have learned, too late, that though crime may purchase a moment's joy, it is sure to be followed by an existence of misery. But you know not--oh! you know not, you who have lived in one course of integrity and honour, how entanglements and temptations crowd upon one, how they interweave a net, from which the heart, were it as strong as a lion, could not break forth, when once we have plunged into a course of wrong,--how the evil wish begets the evil act,--how the evil act calls to the lie to conceal it,--how the lie, in its shame, has recourse to a new crime to cover it. None can know, none can tell, what are the difficulties, the agonies--what are the struggles, the writhings, of those who go on in doing what is wrong, with some sense of right remaining. Oh! the longing for deliverance; the eager thirst to obliterate the past; the tender thoughts of youth and infancy, and innocence and peace; the fearful looking forward to the future day, when Satan will claim his tribute of fresh wickedness to purchase a brief immunity from the penalty of the soul's dark bond; the effort for firmness, even in the course we have taken; the feeling that there is no real strength but in virtue, no fortitude but in honesty! It is inexpressible, it cannot be described or told: but I call God to witness that I speak the truth, when I say, that I even I, for the last twenty years--though I seemed to have gained all that ambition could desire--though wealth, power, luxury, enjoyment, were all at my command--have suffered tortures that hell itself can hardly equal, and which might well expiate a life of sin. I know now, I know bitterly, what is the meaning of 'the worm that never dies, and the fire that can never be quenched.' And what has this strife made me?--how changed a thing from what I was before! If I look back but for a few short years, I can see myself a different being. Do you remember, Ferdinand, when we were boys together at Würzburg, and this good lord here of Leiningen was our gay companion, how cheerfully the days passed, how light the hours seemed? Time had no weight: existence was a blessing. The free, sunshiny air came with its wings loaded with