, were well known to her: and, though superior to the inimical
feeling which had so lately been exhibited against the luckless Balthazar,
she had certainly never anticipated a shock so cruel as was now produced,
by abruptly learning that this despised and persecuted being was the
father of the youth to whom she had yielded her virgin affections. When
the words which proclaimed the connexion had escaped the lips of
Sigismund, she listened like one who fancied that her ears deceived her.
She had prepared herself to learn that he derived his being from some
peasant or ignoble artisan, and, once or twice, as he drew nearer to the
fatal declaration, awkward glimmerings of a suspicion that some repulsive
moral unworthiness was connected with his origin troubled her imagination;
but her apprehensions could not, by possibility, once turn in the
direction of the revolting truth. It was some time before she was able to
collect her thoughts, or to reflect on the course it most became her to
pursue. But, as has been seen, it was long before she could summon the
self-command to request what she now saw was doubly necessary, another
meeting with her lover. As both had thought of nothing but his last words
during the short separation, there appeared no abruptness in the manner in
which he resumed the discourse, on seating himself at her side, exactly as
if they had not parted at all.

"The secret has been torn from me, Adelheid. The headsman of the canton is
my father; were the fact publicly known, the heartless and obdurate laws
would compel me to be his successor. He has no other child, except a
gentle girl--one innocent and kind as thou."

Adelheid covered her face with both her hands, as if to shut out a view of
the horrible truth. Perhaps an instinctive reluctance to permit her
companion to discover how great a blow had been given by this avowal of
his birth, had also its influence in producing the movement. They who have
passed the period of youth, and who can recall those days of inexperience
and hope, when the affections are fresh and the heart is untainted with
too much communion with the world,--and, especially, they who know of what
a delicate compound of the imaginative and the real the master-passion is
formed, how sensitively it regards all that can reflect credit on the
beloved object, and with what ingenuity it endeavors to find plausible
excuses for every blot that may happen, either by accident or demerit, to
tarnish