"'Look, child!' she cried; 'you must, for I am going to die, and you shall keep the secret! You shall watch over your father alone—all alone! The honor of our family depends upon it!'
"We returned. A fortnight later my mother died, leaving to me the accomplishment of her vow and the lesson of her example. I have faithfully discharged my trust, but oh, at what a cost! You have seen it! I have been obliged to disobey my father and make him wretched. My marriage could have accomplished nothing, though he does not know it, and to marry would have been to bring a stranger into our midst and betray the family secret. I resisted. No one in the Castle knows the nature of my father's malady, and had it not been for yesterday's crisis, which broke down my strength and prevented me from watching by my father, I should still have been the sole depositary of the secret. God has willed otherwise; he has placed in your keeping the honor of our family.
"Such is my story, and in view of what you told me a few moments ago (and she colored charmingly), I feel that I need hardly ask you if you will share with me my burden, for my strength is unequal to it—I am bending beneath its weight."
She had risen as she finished speaking. For all answer, I sprang forward, and throwing my arms about her I drew her close to me and covered her upturned face and forehead with passionate kisses, and she rested, a delicious burden in my arms.
"Odile," I cried, "I will be all this and a thousand times more, if you will only consent to let me. I am the petitioner, not you; and in allowing me to share with you even the least of your trials, you make me forever your debtor. You have told me the reason of your vow, and in doing so you have removed the necessity for its further existence. Oh, Odile, may I hope—may I hope, I say, that if I can raise the spell which overhangs the Castle, and restore your father's health,—as the price of it, I may have your love?"
After a moment, she replied softly, as she gently disengaged herself from my arms:
"You may;" and she added, "until then my first duty is ever to my father."
I pressed the hand which she yielded to me to my lips, exclaiming with a smile, "This seals the promise!"
Then I continued:
"And one thing more. We must seize this creature known as the Black Plague, and find out what she is, whence she comes, and what she wants here."