rrupted by her sighs and her sobs, she recounted to him the sad and
unhappy history of her love; she unveiled before him the whole web of
cunning and deceit, that her father had drawn around them both. She laid
her whole heart open and unveiled before him. She told him of her love,
of her agonies, of her ambition, and her remorse. She accused herself;
but she pleaded her love as an excuse, and with streaming tears,
clinging to his knees, she implored him for pity, for forgiveness.

He thrust her violently from him, and stood up in order to escape
her touch. His noble countenance glowed with anger: his eyes darted
lightning; his long flowing hair shaded his lofty brow and his face like
a sombre veil. He was beautiful in his wrath, beautiful as the archangel
Michael trampling the dragon beneath his feet. And thus he bent down
his head toward her; thus he gazed at her with flashing and contemptuous
looks.

"I forgive you?" said he. "Never will that be! Ha, shall I forgive
you?--you, who have made my entire life a ridiculous lie, and
transformed the tragedy of my love into a disgusting farce? Oh,
Geraldine, how I have loved you; and now you have become to me a
loathsome spectre, before which my soul shudders, and which I must
execrate! You have crushed my life, and even robbed my death of its
sanctity; for now it is no longer the martyrdom of my love, but only the
savage mockery of my credulous heart. Oh, Geraldine, how beautiful it
would have been to die for you!--to go to death with your name upon
my lips!--to bless you!--to thank you for my happy lot, as the axe was
already uplifted to smite off my head! How beautiful to think that death
does not separate us, but is only the way to an eternal union; that we
should lose each other but a brief moment here, to find each other again
forevermore!"

Geraldine writhed at his feet like a worm trodden upon; and her groans
of distress and her smothered moans were the heartrending accompaniment
of his melancholy words.

"But that is now all over!" cried Henry Howard; and his face, which was
before convulsed with grief and agony, now glowed again with wrath. "You
have poisoned my life and my death; and I shall curse you for it, and my
last word will be a malediction on the harlequin Geraldine!"

"Have pity!" groaned Jane. "Kill me, Henry; stamp my head beneath your
feet; only let this torture end!"

"Nay, no pity!" yelled he, wildly; "no pity for this impostor, who has
stolen