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It matters not who I am, said Cedric; proceed, unhappy woman, with thy tale of horror and guilt!Guilt there must bethere is guilt even in thy living to tell it. There isthere is, answered the wretched woman, deep, black, damning guiltguilt, that lies like a load at my breastguilt, that all the penitential fires of here-after cannot cleanse.Yes, in these halls, stained with the noble and pure blood of my father and my brethren in these very halls, to have lived the paramour of their murderer, the slave at once and the partaker of his pleasures, was to render every breath which I drew of vital air a crime and a curse. Wretched woman! exclaimed Cedric. And while the friends of thy fatherwhile each true Saxon heart, as it breathed a requiem for his soul, and those of his valiant sons, forgot not in their prayers the murdered Ulricawhile all mourned and honoured the dead, thou hast lived to merit our hate and execrationlived to unite thyself with the vile tyrant who murdered thy nearest and dearestwho shed the blood of infancy, rather than a male of the noble house of Torquil Wolfganger should survivewith him hast thou lived to unite thyself, and in the bands of lawless love! In lawless bands, indeed, but not in those of love! answered the hag; love will sooner visit the regions of eternal doom, than those unhallowed vaults.No, with that at least I cannot reproach myselfhatred to Front-de-Buf and his race governed my soul most deeply, even in the hour of his guilty endearments. You hated him, and yet you lived, replied Cedric; wretch! was there no poniardno knifeno bodkin! Well was it for thee, since thou didst prize such an existence, that the secrets of a Norman castle are like those of the grave. For had I but dreamed of the daughter of Torquil living in foul communion with the murderer of her father, the sword of a true Saxon had found thee out even in the arms of thy paramour! Wouldst thou indeed have done this justice to the name of Torquil? said Ulrica, for we may now lay aside her assumed name of Urfried; thou art, then, the true Saxon report speaks thee! for even within these accursed walls, where, as thou well sayest, guilt shrouds itself in inscrutable mystery, even there has the name of Cedric been soundedand I, wretched and degraded, have rejoiced to think that there yet breathed an avenger of our unhappy nation. I also have had my hours of vengeanceI have fomented the quarrels of our foes, and heated drunken revelry into murderous broilI have seen their blood flowI have heard their dying groans! Look on me, Cedricare there not still left on this foul and faded face some traces of the features of Torquil? Ask me net of them, Ulrica, replied Cedric, in a tone of grief mixed with abhorrence; these traces form such a resemblance as arises from the graves of the dead, when a fiend has animated the lifeless corpse. Be it so, answered Ulrica; yet were these fiendish features the mask of a spirit of light when they were able to set at variance the elder Front-de-Buf and his son Reginald! The darkness of hell should hide what followed, but revenge must lift the veil, and darkly intimate what it would raise the dead to speak aloud. Long had the smouldering fire of discord glowed between the tyrant father and his savage sonlong had I nursed, in secret, the unnatural hatredit blazed forth in an hour of drunken wassail, and at his own board fell my oppressor by the hand of his own sonsuch are the secrets these vaults conceal!Rend asunder, ye accursed arches, she added, looking up towards the roof, and bury in your fall all who are conscious of the hideous mystery! And thou, creature of guilt and misery, said Cedric, what became thy lot on the death of thy ravisher? Guess it, but ask it not.Here, here I dwelt, till age, premature age, has stamped its ghastly features on my countenancescorned and insulted where I was once obeyed, and compelled to bound the revenge which had once such ample scope, to the efforts of petty malice of a discontented menial, or the vain or unheeded curses of an impotent hagcondemned to hear from my lonely turret the sounds of revelry in which I once partook, or the shrieks and groans of new victims of oppression. |
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