"Much the same; I feel very weak, and have at times a most painful sensation of being suffocated. Why was I not permitted to quit this world during my late attack?" "Sarah," replied Thomas Seyton, after a momentary silence, "you are hovering between life and death,--any violent emotion might destroy you or recall your feeble powers and restore you to health." "There can be no further trial for me, brother!" "You know not that--" "I could now even hear that Rodolph were dead without a shock. The pale spectre of my murdered child--murdered through my instrumentality, is ever before me. It creates not mere emotion, but a bitter and ceaseless remorse. Oh, brother, I have known the feelings of a mother only since I have become childless." "I own I liked better to find in you that cold, calculating ambition, that made you regard your daughter but as a means of realising the dream of your whole existence." "That ambition fell to the ground, crushed for ever beneath the overwhelming force of the prince's reproaches. And the picture drawn by him of the horrors to which my child had been exposed awakened in my breast all a mother's tenderness." "And how," said Seyton, hesitatingly and laying deep emphasis on each word he uttered, "if by a miracle, a chance, an almost impossibility, your daughter were still living, tell me how you would support such a discovery." "I should expire of shame and despair!" "No such thing! You would be but too delighted at the triumph such a circumstance would afford to your ambition; for had your daughter survived, the prince would, beyond a doubt, have married you." "And admitting the miracle you speak of could happen, I should have no right to live; but so soon as the prince had bestowed on me the title of his consort, my duty would have been to deliver him from an unworthy spouse, and my daughter from an unnatural mother." The perplexity of Thomas Seyton momentarily increased. Commissioned by Rodolph, who was waiting in an adjoining room, to acquaint Sarah that Fleur-de-Marie still lived, he knew not how to proceed. So feeble was the state of the countess's health, that an instant might extinguish the faint spark that still animated her frame; and he saw that any delay in performing the nuptial rite between herself and the prince might be fatal to every hope. Determined to legitimise the birth of Fleur-de-Marie by giving every necessary formality to the ceremony, the prince had brought with him a clergyman to perform the sacred service, and two witnesses in the persons of Murphy and Baron de Grauen. The Duc de Lucenay and Lord Douglas, hastily summoned by Seyton, had arrived to act as attesting witnesses on the part of the countess.