Page:The Castle of Wolfenbach - Parsons - 1854.djvu/126

 you have sufficiently proved your truth and honour, by preserving them so many years from your dearest friends:—I am sure our confessor will absolve you." "May be so, (replied Madame Le Roche) and on our return to town I will consult him, till when I shall take up my story from the day Matilda left me. "Charmed that I was likely to procure an asylum for her, as I doubted not of your acceding to my request, I retired to bed at an early hour, but could not sleep; about midnight I thought I heard an uncommon noise at the outward doors; I listened, and, convinced it was not fancy, I called on Margarite; the noise had alarmed her, she ran to me in the same instant that we heard the door in the kitchen burst open, and the Count appeared with an ill-looking fellow. I was out of bed, and had thrown on a wrapping gown about me; I trembled from head to foot; he came up to me furiously; "Wretch, (cried he) you have broken your oath with me, and therefore mine is no longer binding—prepare to die." Despair had given me courage—I was no longer the poor weak creature he had entangled some years before; my spirits returned, "Strike, barbarian, and complete your crimes, I fear not death, it will free me from all the miseries you have heaped upon me; but I will not suffer under imputed guilt—I have broke no vows, I have kept the fatal oath you extorted from me in the hour of terror." "How dare you persist in falsehoods, (cried he;) you have had a woman here—you see and converse with Joseph daily; dare you deny those charges?" "I do not, (answered I) but still I have preserved my faith; the woman came here by accident, unawed by the terrors, Joseph had endeavoured to inspire, but she knew not who I was, nor any thing relative to my situation, and goes from hence in a few days: as to Joseph, the poor fellow, when he brings my provisions, enters into a little chat with Margarite, and sometimes I speak to him, and where is the mighty crime? You must know your diaboli-