Chapter 27 - Page 2

"I was not born," she said, "father, the wretch that thou now seest me. I was free, was happy, was honoured, loved, and was beloved. I am now a slave, miserable and degraded---the sport of my masters' passions while I had yet beauty---the object of their contempt, scorn, and hatred, since it has passed away. Dost thou wonder, father, that I should hate mankind, and, above all, the race that has wrought this change in me? Can the wrinkled decrepit hag before thee, whose wrath must vent itself in impotent curses, forget she was once the daughter of the noble Thane of Torquilstone, before whose frown a thousand vassals trembled?"

"Thou the daughter of Torquil Wolfganger!" said Cedric, receding as he spoke; "thou---thou---the daughter of that noble Saxon, my father's friend and companion in arms!"

"Thy father's friend!" echoed Urfried; "then Cedric called the Saxon stands before me, for the noble Hereward of Rotherwood had but one son, whose name is well known among his countrymen. But if thou art Cedric of Rotherwood, why this religious dress? ---hast thou too despaired of saving thy country, and sought refuge from oppression in the shade of the convent?"

"It matters not who I am," said Cedric; "proceed, unhappy woman, with thy tale of horror and guilt!---Guilt there must be---there is guilt even in thy living to tell it."

"There is---there is," answered the wretched woman, "deep, black, damning guilt,---guilt, that lies like a load at my breast --guilt, that all the penitential fires of hereafter 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 father---while 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 Ulrica---while all mourned and honoured the dead, thou hast lived to merit our hate and execration---lived to unite thyself with the vile tyrant who murdered thy nearest and dearest---who shed the blood of infancy, rather than a male of the noble house of Torquil Wolfganger should survive---with him hast thou lived to unite thyself, and in the hands of lawless love!"

"In lawless hands, 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 myself---hatred to Front-de-Boeuf 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 poniard---no knife---no bodkin!---Well was it for thee, since thou didst prize such an existence, that the secrets of a