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 posed not this dreadful scene on the female whose oath must now secure her silence.”

Then staring wildly on Mademoiselle de Montbrun, she continued:—

“Why, foolish girl, wouldst thou insist on my partaking thy bed? the viper might have coiled in thy bosom; the midnight assassin might have aimed his dagger at thy breast—but the poison of the one would have been less fatal, and the apprehension of instant annihilation from the other would have been less oppressive, than the harrowing scene which thou art doomed this night to witness—Doomed, I say; for all the powers of hell, whose orgies you must behold, cannot release you from the spectacle which you have voluntarily sought.”

“To what am I doomed!” cried Emily, whose fears for herself were lessened in the dread she felt for her friend’s intellects, which she supposed were suddenly become affected by illness, or from the incidents of the past day.

Isabella, after a silence of several minutes, during which she endeavoured to recover some degree of composure, in a softened but determined voice, said:—

“Think not, my friend, (if I may use that endearing expression to one whose early prospects and happier days I am unwillingly condemned to