Part 33 (2/2)

”I yielded to him what is most sacred in life, and yet you ask if he was mine!” said the countess, smiling sadly.

Elise uttered a loud, piercing shriek, and covered her face with her hands. Her emotion was so expressive and painful that it touched the heart even of her rival. Almost lovingly she pa.s.sed her arm around Elise's waist and drew her down gently to her on the sofa. ”Come,”

said she, ”let us sit by each other like two sisters. Come, and listen to me. I will disclose a picture which will make your soul shudder!”

Elise yielded to her mechanically. She let herself involuntarily glide down on the sofa, and suffered the countess to take her hand. ”Feodor once belonged to her,” she murmured. ”His heart was once given to another.”

”Will you listen to me?” asked the countess; and, seeing Elise still lost in silent reverie, she continued: ”I will relate to you the history of Feodor von Brenda, and his unhappy, forsaken bride.” Elise shuddered, and cast a wandering, despairing look around.

”Will you listen to me?” repeated the countess.

”Speak--I am listening,” whispered Elise, languidly. And then, the Countess Lodoiska von Sandomir, often interrupted by Elise's plaintive sighs, her outbursts of heartfelt sympathy, related to the young girl the sad and painful story of her love and her betrayal.

She was a young girl, scarcely sixteen, the daughter of a prince, impoverished by his own fault and prodigality, when she became the victim of her father's avarice. Without compa.s.sion for her tears, her timid youth, he had sold her for a million. With the cruel selfishness of a spendthrift miser, he had sold his young, fresh, beautiful daughter for dead, s.h.i.+ning metal, to a man of sixty years, fit to be her grandfather, and who persecuted the innocent girl with the ardent pa.s.sion of a stripling. She had been dragged to the altar, and the priest had been deaf to the ”No!” she had uttered, when falling unconscious at his feet. Thus she had become the wife of the rich Count Sandomir--a miserable woman who stood, amidst the splendor of life, without hope, without joy, as in a desert.

But one day this desert had changed, and spring bloomed in her soul, for love had come to warm her chilled heart with the sunbeam of happiness. She did not reproach herself, nor did she feel any scruples of conscience, that it was not her husband whom she loved. What respect could she have for marriage, when for her it had been only a matter of sale and purchase? She had been traded off like a slave, and with happy exultation she said to herself, ”Love has come to make me free, and, as a free and happy woman, I will tear this contract by which I have been sold.” And she had torn it. She had had no compa.s.sion on the gray hairs and devoted heart of her n.o.ble husband.

She had been sacrificed, and now pitilessly did she sacrifice her husband to her lover. She saw but one duty before her--to reward the love of the man she adored with boundless devotion. No concealment, no disguise would she allow. Any attempt at equivocation she regarded as an act of treason to the great and holy feeling which possessed her whole soul.

Usually all the world is acquainted with the treachery and infidelity of a woman, while it is yet a secret to her husband. But the countess took care that her husband should be the first to learn of his injured honor, her broken faith. She had hoped that he would turn from her in anger, and break the marriage-bond which united her to him. But her husband did not liberate her. He challenged the betrayer of his honor, whose treachery was the blacker, because the count himself had introduced him into his house, as the son of the friend of his youth.

They fought. It was a deadly combat, and the old man of sixty, already bowed down by rage and grief, could not stand against the strength of his young and practised adversary. He was overcome. The dying husband had been brought to Countess Lodoiska, his head supported by his murderer, her lover. Even in this terrible moment she felt no anger against him, and as the eyes of her husband grew dull in death, she could only remember that she was now free to become his wife. She had thrown herself at the feet of the empress to implore her consent to this marriage, on which depended the hope and happiness, the honor and atonement of her life. The empress had not refused her consent, had herself appointed the wedding day which should unite her favorite with the young countess.

But a short time before the arrival of this day, so ardently longed for, looked forward to with so many prayers, such secret anxiety and gnawing self-reproaches, the war broke out, and Lodoiska did not dare to keep back her lover, as with glowing zeal he hastened to his colors. He had sworn to her never to forget her; to return faithful to her, and she had believed him.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE PUNISHMENT.

Elise had followed the countess in her narration with intense attention and warm sympathy. Her face had become pale as marble, her countenance sad, and her eyes filled with tears. A fearful antic.i.p.ation dawned in her heart, but she turned away from it. She would not listen to this secret voice which whispered to her that this sad tale of the countess had reference to her own fate.

”Your lover did not deceive your trust?” asked she. ”With such a b.l.o.o.d.y seal upon your love he dare not break his faith.”

”He did break it,” answered the countess, painfully. ”I was nothing more to him than a guilty woman, and he went forth to seek an angel.

He forgot his vows, his obligations, and cast me away, for I was a burden to him.”

Both were silent in the bitterness of their sorrow. The countess fastened her large, bright eyes upon the young girl, who stared before her, pale, motionless, absorbed in her own grief.

This anxious silence was finally broken by the countess. ”I have not yet told you the name of my lover. Shall I name him to you?”

Elise awoke as if from a heavy dream. ”No,” cried she, eagerly, ”no, do not name him. What have I to do with him? I do not know him. What do I care to hear the name of a man who has committed so great a crime?”

”You must hear it,” said the countess, solemnly. ”You must learn the name of the man who chained me to him by a b.l.o.o.d.y, guilt-stained past, and then deserted me. It is Colonel Count Feodor von Brenda!”

Elise uttered a cry, and sank, half fainting, back on the cus.h.i.+ons of the sofa. But this dejection did not last long. Her heart, which for a moment seemed to stop, resumed again its tumultuous beating; her blood coursed wildly through her veins, and her soul, unused to the despair of sorrow, resolved to make one last effort to free itself from the fetters with which her evil fate wished to encompa.s.s her. She drew herself up with glowing cheeks and flas.h.i.+ng eyes. ”This is false,” she cried; ”a miserable invention, concocted to separate me from Feodor.

Oh! I see through it all. I understand now my father's solemn a.s.severations, and why Bertram brought you to me. But you are all mistaken in me. Go, countess, and tell your friends, 'Elise offers up every thing and gives every thing to him whom she loves, in whom she believes, even if the whole world testifies against him.'” And with a triumphant smile, throwing back her head, she stood up and was about to leave the room.

<script>