"Thanks to you, at least, for awakening in me a sincere repentance for the past, and a hearty desire to devote myself to the good of those whose happiness I have so fearfully disturbed! Yes, when my brother told me, a short time since, of our child's preservation,--let me say our child, it will not be for long I shall require your indulgence,--I felt all the agony of knowing myself irrecoverably ill, yet overjoyed to think that the birth of our child would be legitimised; that done, I shall die happy!" "Do not talk thus." "You will see I shall not deceive you again; my death is certain." "And you will die without one particle of that insatiate ambition which has been your return! By what fatality has your repentance been delayed till now?" "Though tardy, it is sincere; and I call Heaven to witness that, at this awful moment, I bless God for removing me from this world, and that I am spared the additional misery of living, as I am aware I should have been a weight and burden to you, as well as a bar to your happiness elsewhere. But can you pardon me? For mercy's sake, say you do! Do not delay to speak forgiveness and peace to my troubled spirit until the arrival of my child, for in her presence you would not choose to pronounce the pardon of her guilty mother. It would be to tell her a tale I would fain she never knew. You will not refuse me the hope that, when I am gone, my memory may be dear to her?" "Tranquillise yourself, she shall know nothing of the past." "Rodolph, do you too say I am forgiven! Oh, forgive me--forgive me! Can you not pity a creature brought low as I am? Alas, my sufferings might well move your heart to pity and to pardon!" "I do forgive you from my innermost soul!" said the prince, deeply affected. The scene was most heartrending. Rodolph opened the folding-doors, and beckoned in the clergyman with the company assembled there, that is to say, Murphy and Baron de Grauen as witnesses on the part of Rodolph, and the Duc de Lucenay and Lord Douglas on the part of the countess; Thomas Seyton followed close behind. All were impressed with the awful solemnity of the melancholy transaction, and even M. de Lucenay seemed to have lost his usual petulance and folly. The contract of marriage between the most high and powerful Prince Gustave Rodolph, fifth reigning Duke of Gerolstein, and Sarah Seyton of Halsburg, Countess Macgregor, which legitimised the birth of Fleur-de-Marie, had been previously drawn up by Baron de Grauen, and, being read by him, was signed by the parties mentioned therein, as well as duly attested by the signature of their witnesses.