‘You have another parent, Venetia,’ said Cadurcis, in a tone of almost irresistible softness, ’the best and greatest of men!  Once you told me that his sanction was necessary to your marriage.  I will obtain it.  O Venetia! be mine, and we will join him; join that ill-fated and illustrious being who loves you with a passion second only to mine; him who has addressed you in language which rests on every lip, and has thrilled many a heart that you even can never know.  My adored Venetia! picture to yourself, for one moment, a life with him; resting on my bosom, consecrated by his paternal love!  Let us quit this mean and miserable existence, which we now pursue, which never could have suited us; let us shun for ever this dull and degrading life, that is not life, if life be what I deem it; let us fly to those beautiful solitudes where he communes with an inspiring nature; let us, let us be happy!’

He uttered these last words in a tone of melting tenderness; he leant forward his head, and his gaze caught hers, which was fixed upon the water.  Her hand was pressed suddenly in his; his eye glittered, his lip seemed still speaking; he awaited his doom.

The countenance of Venetia was quite pale, but it was disturbed.  You might see, as it were, the shadowy progress of thought, and mark the tumultuous passage of conflicting passions.  Her mind, for a moment, was indeed a chaos.  There was a terrible conflict between love and duty.  At length a tear, one solitary tear, burst from her burning eye-ball, and stole slowly down her cheek; it relieved her pain.  She pressed Cadurcis hand, and speaking in a hollow voice, and with a look vague and painful, she said, ’I am a victim, but I am resolved.  I never will desert her who devoted herself to me.’

Cadurcis quitted her hand rather abruptly, and began walking up and down on the turf that surrounded the fountain.

‘Devoted herself to you!’ he exclaimed with a fiendish laugh, and speaking, as was his custom, between his teeth.  ’Commend me to such devotion.  Not content with depriving you of a father, now forsooth she must bereave you of a lover too!  And this is a mother, a devoted mother!  The cold-blooded, sullen, selfish, inexorable tyrant!’

‘Plantagenet!’ exclaimed Venetia with great animation.

’Nay, I will speak.  Victim, indeed!  You have ever been her slave.  She a devoted mother!  Ay! as devoted as a mother as she was dutiful as a wife!  She has no heart; she never had a feeling.  And she cajoles you with her love, her devotion, the stern hypocrite!’

‘I must leave you,’ said Venetia; ‘I cannot bear this.’