Do you hesitate? said the Marquis.—No, my Lord, my resolution is fixed—I will obey you. But methinks it would be better to avoid bloodshed. Strange secrets have been revealed by——
Aye, but how avoid it? interrupted the Marquis.—Poison I will not venture to procure. I have given you one sure instrument of death. You also may find it dangerous to inquire for a drug. La Motte perceived that he could not purchase poison without incurring a discovery much greater than that he wished to avoid. You are right, my Lord, and I will follow your orders implicitly. The Marquis now proceeded, in broken sentences, to give further directions concerning this dreadful scheme.
In her sleep, said he, at midnight; the family will then be at rest. Afterwards they planned a story which was to account for her disappearance, and by which it was to seem that she had sought an escape in consequence of her aversion to the addresses of the Marquis. The doors of her chamber and of the west tower were to be left open to corroborate this account, and many other circumstances were to be contrived to confirm the suspicion. They further consulted how the Marquis was to be informed of the event; and it was agreed that he should come as usual to the abbey on the following day.—To-night then, said the Marquis, I may rely upon your resolution?
You may, my Lord.
Farewell, then. When we meet again——
When we meet again said La Motte, it will be done. He followed the Marquis to the abbey; and having seen him mount his horse and wished him a good night, he retired to his chamber, where he shut himself up.
Adeline, meanwhile, in the solitude of her prison gave way to the despair which her condition inspired. She tried to arrange her thoughts, and to argue herself into some degree of resignation; but reflection, by representing the past, and reason, by anticipating the future, brought before her mind the full picture, of her misfortunes, and she sunk in despondency. Of Theodore, who, by a conduct so noble, had testified his attachment and involved himself in ruin, she thought with a degree of anguish infinitely superior to any she had felt upon any other occasion.
That the very exertions which had deserved all her gratitude, and awakened all her tenderness, should be the cause of his destruction, was a circumstance so much beyond the ordinary bounds of misery, that her fortitude sunk at once before it. The idea of Theodore suffering—Theodore dying—was for ever present to her imagination; and frequently excluding the sense of her own danger, made her conscious only of his. Sometimes the hope he had given her of being able to vindicate his conduct, or at least to obtain a pardon, would return; but it was like the faint beam of an April morn, transient and cheerless. She knew that the Marquis, stung with jealousy and exasperated to revenge, would pursue him with unrelenting malice.
Against such an enemy what could Theodore oppose? Conscious rectitude would not avail him to ward off the blow which disappointed passion and powerful pride directed. Her distress was considerably heightened by reflecting that no intelligence of him could reach her at the abbey, and that she must remain she knew not how long in the most dreadful suspense concerning his fate. From the abbey she saw no possibility of escaping. She was a prisoner in a chamber inclosed at every avenue; she had no opportunity of conversing with any person who could afford her even a chance of relief; and she saw herself condemned to await in passive silence the impending destiny, infinitely more dreadful to her imagination than death itself.
Thus circumstanced, she yielded to the pressure of her misfortunes, and would sit for hours motionless and given up to thought. Theodore! she would frequently exclaim, you cannot hear my voice, you cannot fly to help me; yourself a prisoner and in chains. The picture was too horrid: the swelling anguish of her heart would subdue her utterance—tears bathed her cheeks—and she became insensible to every thing but the misery of Theodore.