The Countess knelt down beside the wretched man, and offered up a fervent prayer to heaven for him. He heard it with a cold, gloomy expression, and when she ceased, only said, "I cannot say amen; I tried, but it is impossible; believe me, Ellen, I am lost,—and, what is more, I mourn not my lost heaven. I want not paradise, but rest. Could I rest for ever in the dark grave 'twill be enough. I have seen you, I have heard you forgive me; the voice I loved in better days to hear has thrilled through me; I have had all I want, leave me to finish life as I deserve. Why should you or my brother trouble yourselves more?"
Tears of sorrow again coursed the Countess's cheek, as she bent over her old lover, and, taking his hand, said, "Do you love me, Edward?"
"Love you? yes; beyond all things earthly and divine. Ellen, you are the only being I love," answered the Viscount, with wild emotion.
"Then, if you love me, you will try and prepare for that place where I humbly hope—nay, believe—after death I shall live; you would not wish to be parted both in time and in eternity?"
"Ellen, you ask an impossibility. Ask anything else. No, it is not my wish, but so it must be. In this life I have seen you afar off, in the life that is to come I must see you afar off too. Oh! that we had never met. Do you recollect what I said when on my knees, which were never bent to man or to God since that moment? did I not say your refusal would drive me to desperation? see what it has done. I do not blame you; I have myself to blame: but ours was an ill-starred acquaintance—an ill-starred love. No, no, you will mourn for me here; you will sometimes give a passing thought to one who adored you so, for never was needle truer to the north than in weal and woe my heart has been to you. This is all I ask; and for me, I am not worthy to love you,—you are like a star I may look up to and worship, but which is at once shrined far above my affection or my hate."
For a long while after the Viscount ceased no word was uttered by either. The scene was at once a striking and a sad one. The prisoner had sunk back on his side, and, resting on his left elbow, gazed on the lovely being who knelt beside him with her hands clasped, and her eyes turned heavenwards. Her lips moved as though she were breathing a fervent petition for her brother. How marked was the contrast between the expression of those two!—vice had sullied the handsome features of one; virtue had lent a purer radiance to the sweet face of the other. How strange the contrast of their hearts!—one like the glacier, cold, dead, unmelting; the other like the warm sunbeam, which, alas! throws its brightness, but thaws not the icy mass it shines on. How different were their thoughts!—one was thinking with remorse on his wretched past life, without hope of a future; the other, whilst mourning over the falsehood which had worked such a ruin, was still ardent with hope that in due time her prayers would be answered; and as the mastless, rudderless vessel, tossed and well nigh wrecked on the tumultuous billows, can yet be refitted, and with a wise captain and pilot steer her way to the haven she was bound for, so would this erring man forget, in that plenitude of rest, peace, and happiness, the storms and tempests, shoals and rocks, of the voyages that had brought him thither.
This silence might have lasted still longer had not the entrance of Giacomo broken it.
"My lady," said he, "Milord wishes to see you; would you follow me?"
The Countess rose. "Adieu, then, for the present, Edward; I shall pray for you, and you will show your love to me by thinking more calmly. I will come and see you again soon, and I hope in another place than this."
She held her hand out with a mournful smile; the Viscount seized it and pressed it to his lips, his heart was too full to allow him to frame the word "adieu." The lady turned away; he watched her till the dark door shut her out from his view, then, sitting up, took the small phial from his breast, laid the letter on the bed beside him, drew the cork, and tossed it from him. "I have nothing more to live for since I have seen her; there is no spot on earth I could live at, and feel she was another's wife," thought the hapless man. "Farewell, Ellen! a long farewell."