Cassier and Charles had slowly climbed to a projecting rock where
nature had made a large table covered with grass. On one side the
ascent was easy, but the other overhung a frightful precipice. They
had entered into an animated conversation; Aloysia, down beneath,
could hear the sharp, quick answers of Charles, but, as such was usual
in the temper of Charles, she did not notice it.

But lo! another moment, and a wild, shrill scream bade her look up;
her father was no longer on the ledge of rock, and Charles flung her
arms towards heaven and fell in a swoon on the edge of the precipice.

Chapter XVI.

A Funeral in the Snow.

When Charles had recovered her consciousness, she found herself
reclining on the lap of Henry, who had been bathing her face with snow
and tears. A long, painful call of her name had reached the inmost
recess of her being whither consciousness had repaired. Springing
to her feet, startled as if from a frightful dream, she gazed around.
Memory and sight returned; folding her face in her hands, she cried
in a paroxysm of grief: "My God! what have I done?"

This was the only intimation she ever gave Aloysia that in the heat
of passion she had pushed her father over the precipice; she was his
murderer. In their conversation the old man, more, perhaps, through
impiety than conviction, misrepresented the good monks. We will not
reproduce the stereotyped calumnies that even nowadays unbelievers love
to heap upon the religious communities of the Catholic Church. The
madness of passion took control in the breast of Charles. Scarcely
knowing what she did, she pushed her aged father towards the precipice;
he slipped, fell over into the chasm, and passed into eternity with
blasphemy on his guilty lips.

The two sisters wept together for hours. Innocence, guilt, and
retribution blended together in a scene of awful tragedy amid the
glaciers of Mt. Blanc.

Seldom in the deeds of brigandage, in crimes committed in dark caves
and lonely mountain paths, was there perpetrated a fouler murder;
seldom in the sensational records of human depravity do we find the
desperado of parricidal guilt under the delicate frame of girlhood.
Yet was she rather an instrument in the hands of avenging Heaven
than a monster of moral iniquity. At that moment the cup of iniquity
was full for the wretch who had long tested the mercy of God. That
Providence which blinded the Jews in judgement for ingratitude, an