e hour of his guilty endearments."

"You hated him, and yet you lived," replied Cedric; "wretch! was there
no poniard--no knife--no bodkin!--Well was it for thee, since thou didst
prize such an existence, that the secrets of a Norman castle are like
those of the grave. For had I but dreamed of the daughter of Torquil
living in foul communion with the murderer of her father, the sword of a
true Saxon had found thee out even in the arms of thy paramour!"

"Wouldst thou indeed have done this justice to the name of Torquil?"
said Ulrica, for we may now lay aside her assumed name of Urfried;
"thou art then the true Saxon report speaks thee! for even within these
accursed walls, where, as thou well sayest, guilt shrouds itself in
inscrutable mystery, even there has the name of Cedric been sounded--and
I, wretched and degraded, have rejoiced to think that there yet
breathed an avenger of our unhappy nation.--I also have had my hours of
vengeance--I have fomented the quarrels of our foes, and heated drunken
revelry into murderous broil--I have seen their blood flow--I have heard
their dying groans!--Look on me, Cedric--are there not still left on
this foul and faded face some traces of the features of Torquil?"

"Ask me not of them, Ulrica," replied Cedric, in a tone of grief mixed
with abhorrence; "these traces form such a resemblance as arises from
the graves of the dead, when a fiend has animated the lifeless corpse."

"Be it so," answered Ulrica; "yet wore these fiendish features the mask
of a spirit of light when they were able to set at variance the elder
Front-de-Boeuf and his son Reginald! The darkness of hell should hide
what followed, but revenge must lift the veil, and darkly intimate what
it would raise the dead to speak aloud. Long had the smouldering fire of
discord glowed between the tyrant father and his savage son--long had I
nursed, in secret, the unnatural hatred--it blazed forth in an hour of
drunken wassail, and at his own board fell my oppressor by the hand of
his own son--such are the secrets these vaults conceal!--Rend asunder,
ye accursed arches," she added, looking up towards the roof, "and bury
in your fall all who are conscious of the hideous mystery!"

"And thou, creature of guilt and misery," said Cedric, "what became thy
lot on the death of thy ravisher?"

"Guess it, but ask it not.--Here--here I dwelt, till age, premature age,
has stamped its ghastly features on my countenance--scorned and in