Every word that now fell from the agitated Empress was balm to the affrighted nerves of her daughter. Her father's secret was then safe; and, still retaining her humble position, she said in faultering accents; "Spare, de Montemar, my gracious mother! As I hope to see heaven, he is guiltless of all my offences against you. But ask me no more—I dare not answer it."
"He has bound you by a vow! or, you, wretched dupe, have disgraced your sex——"
The mother's lips could not finish the charge she was about to put upon her innocent child. She paused, and threw herself into a chair; for her own heart recollected its youthful and chaste admiration of the father of this very de Montemar, and she burst into tears. The picture fell to the floor. Theresa looked where it lay, but forbore to touch it. Her heart was softened at her mother's silent tears; and her own trickling down her cheeks, she ventured to take the Empress's hand, and put it to her lips. Elizabeth pressed the filial hand that trembled in her's; and then Theresa faintly articulated,—
"Oh, my mother! release me from this horrid betrothment, and you shall know every thought and deed of this agonized heart!"
The Empress dried the tears from her eyes, and turning gently on her child,—"I pity you, Theresa," said she, "but I can do no more. You are born a princess; and your inevitable fate is to marry, not where your inclinations may prompt, but where the interests of your country dictate. Your birth-right gives you a sceptre, ordains you to be the dispenser of good or evil, to millions of dependent subjects; and you have nothing to do with love, with private, selfish joys. We, that are born to such destinies, must forswear the one, or resign the other."
"Then let the Electress of Bavaria take the reversion of the German empire!" exclaimed the Princess, ardently, "let me resign all state and power, and only make me the happy wife of ——"
She checked herself, and buried her head in her mothers lap.
"Of him you must never see again!" returned the Empress, rising from her seat, and kissing the burning forehead of her daughter as she replaced her in her chair.
"I pardon your youth and innocence; and yet, was it innocence to forget the claims of Otteline upon his heart? Oh, my child, how deep must have been his wiles! That unblushing face of falsehood; that affected champion of honour! Never, never, will I forgive him. Theresa, you have seen de Montemar for the last time, till you are the wife of his prince."
As she spoke, she moved back, and found something under her foot. She stepped aside. It was the portrait which she had crushed, crystal and ivory, into one shattered mass. The half-smothered cry of Theresa at the sight of the destruction, and the tears which gushed from her eyes, as, she involuntarily sprung forward to save the obliterated relics, confounded and penetrated her mother. While she hung, weeping, over them, the Empress drew a troubled sigh, and quitted the apartment.