“I will, I will, mine own! let me but see thee calm. Am I not thine own? Art thou not mine? Come to my heart, sweet one; thou wilt find no change towards thee!”
“Answer me,” she reiterated; “Gabriel, thou hast not answered! By the love thou bearest me, by the vow unto my father—to love and cherish me till death—by thine own truth—I charge thee answer me, thou art no heretic?”
“If to raise my voice against the gross abuses fostered by the Pope and his pampered minions in every land, to deny to them all allegiance, to refuse all belief in the intervention of saints and martyrs, or that absolution, bought and sold, can bring pardon and peace; if to read and believe the Holy Scriptures, and follow as they teach—if this is to be a heretic, Idalie, even for thy dear sake, I may not deny it. Yes, dearest, I am a heretic in all, save love for thee!”
A low, despairing cry broke from those blanched lips, and Idalie fell forward at his feet. It seemed long ere Montgomeri could restore her to life, though he used a tenderness and skill strange in a rough warrior like himself; but no fond look returned his anxious gaze. She struggled to withdraw herself from his embrace, but the tone of reproachful agony with which he pronounced her name rendered the struggle vain; and, clinging to him, she sobbed. “I thought not of this, dreamed not of this; even in the dark foreboding haze clinging round the hour of meeting. Gabriel, in mercy leave me, or I shall forget my vow, and hurl down on me the wrath of the dead.”
“Leave thee!—vow!—wrath of the dead!” he repeated. “Oh, do not talk so wildly, love; reproach, upbraid me, as thou wilt; but tell me not to leave thee. Wherefore should we part?”
“Gabriel, it must be! I have no strength when I gaze on thee. Let not perjury darken this deep misery: leave me!”
“Perjury! what hast thou sworn?” demanded Montgomeri, hoarse, and choked with strong emotion.
“Never to wed with heresy! To retain the faith of my ancestors pure and unsullied as I received it. My father, from his bed of death, demanded this vow, and I pledged it unhesitatingly; for could I doubt thee?”
She had spoken with unnatural composure, but there was such a sudden and agonized change on the features of the count, that it not only banished calmness, but reawakened hope.
“Oh, say thou wert deceiving me, Gabriel. Dearest Gabriel, have I not judged thee wrongly, that still we may pray together as we have prayed? Thou hast not turned aside from our old and sainted creed. Say but this grief is causeless; that I may still love thee without sin; that there is no need to part!”