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ever! Leave me, my brethren; much have I to tell this holy man in private."
The monks retired immediately, and Matilda and the abbot remained together.
"What have you done, imprudent woman?" exclaimed the latter, as soon as they were left alone: "tell me; are my suspicions just? Am I indeed to lose you? Has your own hand been the instrument of your destruction?"
She smiled, and grasped his hand.
"In what have I been imprudent, father? I have sacrificed a pebble, and saved a diamond. My death preserves a life valuable to the world, and more dear to me than my own.—Yes, father, I am poisoned; but know, that the poison once circulated in your veins."
"Matilda!"
"What I tell you I resolved never to discover to you but on the bed of death; that moment is now arrived. You cannot have forgotten the day already, when your life was endangered by the bite of a cienti-pedoro
