beauty--the object of their contempt, scorn, and hatred,
since it has passed away. Dost thou wonder, father, that I should hate
mankind, and, above all, the race that has wrought this change in me?
Can the wrinkled decrepit hag before thee, whose wrath must vent itself
in impotent curses, forget she was once the daughter of the noble Thane
of Torquilstone, before whose frown a thousand vassals trembled?"

"Thou the daughter of Torquil Wolfganger!" said Cedric, receding as he
spoke; "thou--thou--the daughter of that noble Saxon, my father's friend
and companion in arms!"

"Thy father's friend!" echoed Urfried; "then Cedric called the Saxon
stands before me, for the noble Hereward of Rotherwood had but one son,
whose name is well known among his countrymen. But if thou art Cedric of
Rotherwood, why this religious dress?--hast thou too despaired of saving
thy country, and sought refuge from oppression in the shade of the
convent?"

"It matters not who I am," said Cedric; "proceed, unhappy woman, with
thy tale of horror and guilt!--Guilt there must be--there is guilt even
in thy living to tell it."

"There is--there is," answered the wretched woman, "deep, black, damning
guilt,--guilt, that lies like a load at my breast--guilt, that all the
penitential fires of hereafter cannot cleanse.--Yes, in these halls,
stained with the noble and pure blood of my father and my brethren--in
these very halls, to have lived the paramour of their murderer, the
slave at once and the partaker of his pleasures, was to render every
breath which I drew of vital air, a crime and a curse."

"Wretched woman!" exclaimed Cedric. "And while the friends of thy
father--while each true Saxon heart, as it breathed a requiem for his
soul, and those of his valiant sons, forgot not in their prayers the
murdered Ulrica--while all mourned and honoured the dead, thou hast
lived to merit our hate and execration--lived to unite thyself with the
vile tyrant who murdered thy nearest and dearest--who shed the blood
of infancy, rather than a male of the noble house of Torquil Wolfganger
should survive--with him hast thou lived to unite thyself, and in the
hands of lawless love!"

"In lawless hands, indeed, but not in those of love!" answered the
hag; "love will sooner visit the regions of eternal doom, than
those unhallowed vaults.--No, with that at least I cannot reproach
myself--hatred to Front-de-Boeuf and his race governed my soul most
deeply, even in th