In one column I read how bravely
the palatine fell, and in the next the dreadful fate of his daughter.
She was revenged!" cried Sir Robert, eagerly grasping the hand of
Thaddeus, who could not restrain the groan that burst from his
breast. "For nearly three months I was deprived of that reason which
had abused her noble nature.
"When I recovered my senes," continued he, in a calmer tone, "and
found I had so fatally suffered the time of any restitution to her to
go by, I began to torture my remorseful heart because that I had not,
immediately on the death of my too much loved Edith, hastened to
Poland, and besought Therese's pardon from her ever-generous heart.
But this vivid approach to a sincere repentance was soon obliterated
by the consideration that, the Countess Sobieski having had a prior
claim to my name, such restitution on my part must have
illegitimatized my darling Pembroke, his dying mother's fondest
bequeathment to a father's arms.
"It was this fearful conviction," exclaimed Sir Robert, a sudden
horror, indeed, distracting his before affectionate eye, "that caused
all my barbarian cruelty. When my dear and long-believed only son
described the danger from which you had rescued him, when he told me
that Therese had fostered him with a parent's tenderness, I was
probed to the heart. But when he added that the young Count Sobieski
was now an alien from his country, and relying on my friendship for a
home, my terror was too truly manifested.
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