"I see none for either. Listen to me. I love you, it is true; but it is
not for my happiness to marry one who dislikes me, nor for my ambition to
connect myself with one whose poverty is greater than my own. I marry
but to keep my plighted faith with your father, and to save you from a
villain you would hate more than myself, and from whom no walls are a
barrier, no laws a defence. One person, indeed, might perhaps have
preserved you from the misery you seem to anticipate with me; that person
might defeat the plans of your father's foe,--effect, it might be, terms
which could revoke his banishment and restore his honours; that person
is--"

"Lord L'Estrange?"

"Lord L'Estrange!" repeated Randal, sharply, and watching her pale parted
lips and her changing colour; "Lord L'Estrange! What could he do? Why
did you name him?"

Violante turned aside. "He saved my father once," said she, feelingly.

"And has interfered, and trifled, and promised, Heaven knows what, ever
since: yet to what end? Pooh! The person I speak of your father would
not consent to see, would not believe if he saw her; yet she is generous,
noble, could sympathize with you both. She is the sister of your
father's enemy, the Marchesa di Negra. I am convinced that she has great
influence with her brother,--that she has known enough of his secrets to
awe him into renouncing all designs on yourself; but it is idle now to
speak of her."

"No, no," exclaimed Violante. "Tell me where she lives--I will see her."