imagine his regrets--"

"His regrets!" exclaimed Clemence; "say his remorse, monseigneur, if he
have any, for never was such a crime more coolly meditated."

"A crime, madame?"

"What else is it, my lord, to bind to yourself in indissoluble bonds a
young girl, who confides in your honour, when you are fatally stricken
with a malady which inspires fear and horror? What else is it, to devote
with certainty an unhappy child to similar misery? What forced M.
d'Harville to make two victims? A blind, insensate passion? No; he found
my birth, my fortune, and my person, to his taste. He wished to make a
convenient marriage, because, doubtless, a bachelor's life wearied him."

"Madame, at least pity him."

"Pity him? If you wish pity, pray let it be bestowed on my child. Poor
victim of this odious union, what nights and days have I passed near
her! What tears have not her misfortunes wrung from me!"

"But her father suffers from the same unmerited afflictions."

"Yet it is that father who has condemned her to a sickly infancy, a
withering youth, and, if she should survive, to a life of isolation and
misery, for she will never marry. Ah, no! I love her too well to expose
her to the chance of one day's weeping over her own offspring, similarly
smitten, as I weep over her. I have suffered too much from treachery, to
render myself guilty of, or an accomplice in, such wickedness!"

"You are right; the vengeance of your mother-in-law was really
atrocious. But patience, and perhaps in your turn you will be avenged,"
said Rodolph, after a moment's reflection.

"What do you mean, my lord?" inquired Clemence, astonished at the change
in his voice.

"I have generally had the satisfaction of seeing those whom I have known
to be wicked most severely punished," he replied, in a voice that made
Clemence shudder. "But the day after this unhappy event what did your
husband say?"

"He confessed, with singular candour, that his two former marriages had
been broken off in consequence of the families becoming acquainted with
the secret of his fearful malady. Thus, then, after having been twice
rejected, he had the shameful, the unmanly courage, to drag a third poor
victim into the abyss of misery the kind intervention of friends had
preserved the others from. And this is what the world calls a gentleman
and a man of honour!"

"For one so good, so full of pity to others, yours are harsh words."

"Because I feel I have been unworthily