aced the scent to your staircase--hazard
a conjecture that the faithful fellow stole the emerald in order to
gratify your desire to search for your father, his beloved master. If
you can make up your mind to so great a sacrifice--oh, that I should
have to ask it of you!--I swear to you by all I hold sacred, by yourself
and by my father's head, I will set Hiram free within three days,
unbeaten and unhurt, and magnificently indemnified; and I will myself
help him on the way whither he may desire to go, or you to send him,
in search of your father.--Be silent; remain neutral in the background;
that is all I ask, and I will keep my word--that, at any rate, you do
not doubt?" She had listened to him with bated breath; she pitied him
deeply as he stood there, a suppliant in bitter anguish of soul, a
criminal who still could not understand that he was one, and who relied
on the confidence that, only yesterday, he still had had the right to
exact from all the world. He appeared before her like a fine proud tree
struck by lightning, whose riven trunk, trembling to its fall, must be
crushed to the earth by the first storm, unless the gardener props it
up. She longed to be able to forget all he had brought upon her and to
grasp his hand in friendly consolation; but her deeply aggrieved pride
helped her to preserve the cold and repellent manner she had so far
succeeded in assuming.

With much hesitation and reserve she consented to be silent as long as
he kept his promise. It was for his father's sake, rather than his own,
that she would so far become his accomplice: at the same time everything
else was at an end between them, and she should bless the hour which
might see her severed from him and his for ever.

The end of her speech was in a strangely hard and repellent tone; she
felt she must adopt it to disguise how deeply she was touched by his
unhappiness and by the extinction of the sunshine in him which had once
warmed her own heart too with bliss. To him it seemed that an icy rigor
breathed in her words--bitter contempt and hostile revulsion. He had
some difficulty in keeping himself from breaking out again in violent
wrath. He was almost sorry that he had trusted her with his secret and
begged her for mercy, instead of leaving things to run their course, and
if it had come to the worst, dragging her to perdition with him. Sooner
would he forfeit honor and peace than humble himself again before this
pitiless and cold-hearte