“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 Norman castle are like those of the grave. For had I but dreamed of the daughter of Torquil living in foul communion with the murderer of her father, the sword of a true Saxon had found thee out even in the arms of thy paramour!”