"Dearest hope!" said Hilda--"fruition! If you knew any thing, you would know that the time for that is rapidly passing, and only your prompt obedience and assistance will benefit you now." "Pardon me," said Gualtier, hastily; "I forgot myself in my excitement. But you ask impossible things. I can not help you here. The obstacle between you and me was nearly removed--and you ask me to replace it." "Obstacle!" said Hilda, in scorn. "Is it thus that you mention _him_?" In her weakness her wrath and indignation burst forth. "That man whom you call an obstacle is one for whose sake I have dragged myself over hundreds of miles; for whom I am now ready to lay down my life. Do not wonder. Do not question me. Call it passion--madness--any thing--but do not attempt to thwart me. Speak now. Will you help me or not?" "Help you!" cried Gualtier, bitterly, "help you! to what? to do that which will destroy my last hope--and after I have extorted from you your promise! Ask me any thing else." "I want nothing else." "You may yet want my aid." "If you do not help me now, I shall never want you." "You have needed me before, and will need me again." "If _he_ dies, I shall never need you again." "If _he_ dies, that is the very time when you will need me." "No, I shall not--for if _he_ dies I will die myself!" cried Hilda, in a burst of uncontrollable passion. Gualtier started, and his heart sank within him. Long and earnestly he looked at her, but he saw that this was more than a fitful outburst of passion. Looking on her face with its stern and fixed resolve, with its intense meaning, he knew that what she had said was none other than her calm, set purpose. He saw it in every one of those faded lineaments, upon which such a change had been wrought in so short a time. He read it in the hollows round her eyes, in her sunken cheeks, in her white, bloodless lips, in her thin, emaciated hands, which were now clenched in desperate resolve. From this he saw that there was no appeal. He learned how strong that passion must be which had thus overmastered her, and was consuming all the energies of her powerful nature. To this she was sacrificing the labor of years, and all the prospects which now lay before her; to this she gave up all her future life, with all its possibilities of wealth and honor and station. A coronet, a castle, a princely revenue, rank, wealth, and title, all lay before her within her grasp; yet now she turned her back upon them, and came to the bedside of the man whose death was necessary to her success, to save him from death. She trampled her own interests in the dust; she threw to the winds the hard-won results of treachery and crime, and only that she might be near him who abhorred her, and whose first word on coming back to consciousness might be an imprecation. Beside this man who hated her, he who adored her was as nothing, and all his devotion and all his adoration were in one moment forgotten.