in the extremity of danger; but you know now the agony I inflicted, or that I endured, in listening to the passionate despair of Rivoli; and when he said, 'Your death I might have borne—it was the will of God, and life would have lived on a hope beyond the grave, but thus to find you changed to me, to think that you can hold our love an offence in the sight of Heaven, and that I, who have loved, and who do love you so unutterably, that I should be the first sacrifice you offer up,—this, Medora, is more than I can bear!'
"In listening thus, how I repented me of my rash interference with the course of human life! If I had given joy, I had also caused more sorrow; and, worse, I had reason to question whether the grief of the marriage thus broken off did not embitter, despite of all my care, the brief period of Donna Maria's life.
"I have now little more to say of myself. The last few years have been devoted to Don Manfredi's declining age; wearisome has the task been, and still I have clung to it. I own, yet shun the fatal truth, that my lot is but an awful solitude, without duties or affections—those ties and blessings of humanity.—And now for the wealth I offer you; I know not its consequences, but I know those consequences can be but in your own acts. I do no more than a mere mortal might. On this interview there is imposed the condition—secrecy; on the possession of riches there is none.
