She sprang up and manifested great joy at seeing me again, and hastened to kiss my hands. But she had no sooner glanced into my face than she uttered a scream of terror and recoiled from me as if I had been a fiend from Hell!
But I approached her and asked: ‘Why do you adorn yourself so late in the night?—why are you so happy? Have the three days been long enough for you to fall? Are you the mistress of Rochus?’ She stood staring at me in horror. She asked: ‘Where have you been and why do you come? You look so ill! Sit, sir, I pray you, and rest. You are pale and you shake with cold. I will make you a warm drink and you will feel better.’
She was silenced by my stern gaze. ‘I have not come to rest and be nursed by you,’ I said. ‘I am here because the Lord commands. Tell me why you sang.’
She looked up at me with the innocent expression of a babe, and replied: ‘Because I had for the moment forgotten that you were going away, and I was happy.’
‘Happy?’
‘Yes—he has been here.’
‘Who? Rochus?’
She nodded. ‘He was so good,’ she said. ‘He will ask his father to consent to see me, and perhaps take me to his great house and persuade the Reverend Superior to remove the curse from my life. Would not that be fine? But then.’ she added, with a sudden change of voice and manner, lowering her eyes, ‘perhaps you would no longer care for me. It is because I am poor and friendless.’
‘What! he will persuade his father to befriend you?—to take you to his home?—you, the hangman’s daughter? He, this reckless youth, at war with God and God’s ministers, will move the Church! Oh, lie, lie, lie! O Benedicta—lost, betrayed Benedicta! By your smiles and by your tears I know that you believe the monstrous promises of this infamous villain.’
‘Yes,’ she said, inclining her head as if she were making a confession of faith before the altar of the Lord, ‘I believe him.’