Part 53 (1/2)

_Countess._ Are they dead? Was the plague abroad.

_Count._ I will not dissemble ... such was never my intention ... that my deliverance was brought about by means of----

_Countess._ Say it at once ... a lady.

_Count._ It was.

_Countess._ She fled with you.

_Count._ She did.

_Countess._ And have you left her, sir?

_Count._ Alas! alas! I have not; and never can.

_Countess._ Now come to my arms, brave, honourable Ludolph! Did I not say thou couldst not be ungrateful? Where, where is she who has given me back my husband?

_Count._ Dare I utter it! in this house.

_Countess._ Call the children.

_Count._ No; they must not affront her: they must not even stare at her: other eyes, not theirs, must stab me to the heart.

_Countess._ They shall bless her; we will all. Bring her in.

[_Zaida is led in by the Count._]

_Countess._ We three have stood silent long enough: and much there may be on which we will for ever keep silence. But, sweet young creature! can I refuse my protection, or my love, to the preserver of my husband? Can I think it a crime, or even a folly, to have pitied the brave and the unfortunate? to have pressed (but alas! that it ever should have been so here!) a generous heart to a tender one?

Why do you begin to weep?

_Zaida._ Under your kindness, O lady, lie the sources of these tears.

But why has he left us? He might help me to say many things which I want to say.

_Countess._ Did he never tell you he was married?

_Zaida._ He did indeed.

_Countess._ That he had children?

_Zaida._ It comforted me a little to hear it.

_Countess._ Why? prithee why?

_Zaida._ When I was in grief at the certainty of holding but the second place in his bosom, I thought I could at least go and play with them, and win perhaps their love.

_Countess._ According to our religion, a man must have only one wife.

_Zaida._ That troubled me again. But the dispenser of your religion, who binds and unbinds, does for sequins or services what our Prophet does purely through kindness.