"But Murielle is to be made the tool—the victim of these desperate plotters—and you know it, father, you know it!"
"Ah," said the abbot, with a groan, "there you sting my inmost heart."
"Then how must mine be stung? but you will enable me to meet—to console her?"
"I—impossible!"
"There is nothing impossible in it," continued Gray, with earnestness; "you must—you shall! Ah, I do not threaten you—I implore. Think of all we have suffered for each other; think of what we may yet be condemned to suffer, by those, whom Evil Fortune seems to have made the arbiters of our destiny."
"'Tis very sad, and very true," replied the abbot, slowly, "but I dare not."
"You are a priest, and may dare anything," exclaimed
Gray, passionately, "and here I swear, that if you do not take me to Murielle, or bring her to me—in short, if you do not enable us to meet, by all that we revere in heaven and on earth, and by the bones of St. Genevieve, I will cast myself in the earl's path, and brave him and his followers to the last; and you know what is sure to ensue then."
"Your instant destruction."
"Promise me—promise," urged Gray, in whose eyes the tears were starting as he pressed the hands of the old abbot.