The Mysteries of Udolpho - Ann Ward Radcliffe (great novels of all time .TXT) 📗

the offer of an alliance, which would do honour to any family; yours, you will recollect, is not noble; you long resisted my remonstrances, but my honour is now engaged, and it shall not be trifled with.—You shall adhere to the declaration, which you have made me an agent to convey to the Count.’

‘I must certainly mistake you, sir,’ said Emily; ‘my answers on the subject have been uniform; it is unworthy of you to accuse me of caprice. If you have condescended to be my agent, it is an honour I did not solicit. I myself have constantly assured Count Morano, and you also, sir, that I never can accept the honour he offers me, and I now repeat the declaration.’

The Count looked with an air of surprise and enquiry at Montoni, whose countenance also was marked with surprise, but it was surprise mingled with indignation.

‘Here is confidence, as well as caprice!’ said the latter. ‘Will you deny your own words, Madam?’

‘Such a question is unworthy of an answer, sir;’ said Emily blushing; ‘you will recollect yourself, and be sorry that you have asked it.’

‘Speak to the point,’ rejoined Montoni, in a voice of increasing vehemence. ‘Will you deny your own words; will you deny, that you acknowledged, only a few hours ago, that it was too late to recede from your engagements, and that you accepted the Count’s hand?’

‘I will deny all this, for no words of mine ever imported it.’

‘Astonishing! Will you deny what you wrote to Mons. Quesnel, your uncle? if you do, your own hand will bear testimony against you.

What have you now to say?’ continued Montoni, observing the silence and confusion of Emily.

‘I now perceive, sir, that you are under a very great error, and that I have been equally mistaken.’

‘No more duplicity, I entreat; be open and candid, if it be possible.’

‘I have always been so, sir; and can claim no merit in such conduct, for I have had nothing to conceal.’

‘How is this, Signor?’ cried Morano, with trembling emotion.

‘Suspend your judgment, Count,’ replied Montoni, ‘the wiles of a female heart are unsearchable. Now, Madame, your EXPLANATION.’

‘Excuse me, sir, if I withhold my explanation till you appear willing to give me your confidence; assertion as present can only subject me to insult.’

‘Your explanation, I entreat you!’ said Morano.

‘Well, well,’ rejoined Montoni, ‘I give you my confidence; let us hear this explanation.’

‘Let me lead to it then, by asking a question.’

‘As many as you please,’ said Montoni, contemptuously.

‘What, then, was the subject of your letter to Mons. Quesnel?’

‘The same that was the subject of your note to him, certainly. You did well to stipulate for my confidence before you demanded that question.’

‘I must beg you will be more explicit, sir; what was that subject?’

‘What could it be, but the noble offer of Count Morano,’ said Montoni.

‘Then, sir, we entirely misunderstood each other,’ replied Emily.

‘We entirely misunderstood each other too, I suppose,’ rejoined Montoni, ‘in the conversation which preceded the writing of that note? I must do you the justice to own, that you are very ingenious at this same art of misunderstanding.’

Emily tried to restrain the tears that came to her eyes, and to answer with becoming firmness. ‘Allow me, sir, to explain myself fully, or to be wholly silent.’

‘The explanation may now be dispensed with; it is anticipated. If Count Morano still thinks one necessary, I will give him an honest one—You have changed your intention since our last conversation; and, if he can have patience and humility enough to wait till tomorrow, he will probably find it changed again: but as I have neither the patience or the humility, which you expect from a lover, I warn you of the effect of my displeasure!’

‘Montoni, you are too precipitate,’ said the Count, who had listened to this conversation in extreme agitation and impatience;—‘Signora, I entreat your own explanation of this affair!’

‘Signor Montoni has said justly,’ replied Emily, ‘that all explanation may now be dispensed with; after what has passed I cannot suffer myself to give one. It is sufficient for me, and for you, sir, that I repeat my late declaration; let me hope this is the last time it will be necessary for me to repeat it—I never can accept the honour of your alliance.’

‘Charming Emily!’ exclaimed the Count in an impassioned tone, ‘let not resentment make you unjust; let me not suffer for the offence of Montoni!—Revoke—’

‘Offence!’ interrupted Montoni—‘Count, this language is ridiculous, this submission is childish!—speak as becomes a man, not as the slave of a pretty tyrant.’

‘You distract me, Signor; suffer me to plead my own cause; you have already proved insufficient to it.’

‘All conversation on this subject, sir,’ said Emily, ‘is worse than useless, since it can bring only pain to each of us: if you would oblige me, pursue it no farther.’

‘It is impossible, Madam, that I can thus easily resign the object of a passion, which is the delight and torment of my life.—I must still love—still pursue you with unremitting ardour;—when you shall be convinced of the strength and constancy of my passion, your heart must soften into pity and repentance.’

‘Is this generous, sir? is this manly? can it either deserve or obtain the esteem you solicit, thus to continue a persecution from which I have no present means of escaping?’

A gleam of moonlight that fell upon Morano’s countenance, revealed the strong emotions of his soul; and, glancing on Montoni discovered the dark resentment, which contrasted his features.

‘By heaven this is too much!’ suddenly exclaimed the Count; ‘Signor Montoni, you treat me ill; it is from you that I shall look for explanation.’

‘From me, sir! you shall have it;’ muttered Montoni, ‘if your discernment is indeed so far obscured by passion, as to make explanation necessary. And for you, Madam, you should learn, that a man of honour is not to be trifled with, though you may, perhaps, with impunity, treat a BOY like a puppet.’

This sarcasm roused the pride of Morano, and the resentment which he had felt at the indifference of Emily, being lost in indignation of the insolence of Montoni, he determined to mortify him, by defending her.

‘This also,’ said he, replying to Montoni’s last words, ‘this also, shall not pass unnoticed. I bid you learn, sir, that you have a stronger enemy than a woman to contend with: I will protect Signora St. Aubert from your threatened resentment. You have misled me, and would revenge your disappointed views upon the innocent.’

‘Misled you!’ retorted Montoni with quickness, ‘is my conduct—my word’—then pausing, while he seemed endeavouring to restrain the resentment, that flashed in his eyes, in the next moment he added, in a subdued voice, ‘Count Morano, this is a language, a sort of conduct to which I am not accustomed: it is the conduct of a passionate boy-

-as such, I pass it over in contempt.’

‘In contempt, Signor?’

‘The respect I owe myself,’ rejoined Montoni, ‘requires, that I should converse more largely with you upon some points of the subject in dispute. Return with me to Venice, and I will condescend to convince you of your error.’

‘Condescend, sir! but I will not condescend to be so conversed with.’

Montoni smiled contemptuously; and Emily, now terrified for the consequences of what she saw and heard, could no longer be silent.

She explained the whole subject upon which she had mistaken Montoni in the morning, declaring, that she understood him to have consulted her solely concerning the disposal of La Vallee, and concluding with entreating, that he would write immediately to M. Quesnel, and rectify the mistake.

But Montoni either was, or affected to be, still incredulous; and Count Morano was still entangled in perplexity. While she was speaking, however, the attention of her auditors had been diverted from the immediate occasion of their resentment, and their passion consequently became less. Montoni desired the Count would order his servants to row back to Venice, that he might have some private conversation with him; and Morano, somewhat soothed by his softened voice and manner, and eager to examine into the full extent of his difficulties, complied.

Emily, comforted by this prospect of release, employed the present moments in endeavouring, with conciliating care, to prevent any fatal mischief between the persons who so lately had persecuted and insulted her.

Her spirits revived, when she heard once more the voice of song and laughter, resounding from the grand canal, and at length entered again between its stately piazzas. The zendaletto stopped at Montoni’s mansion, and the Count hastily led her into the hall, where Montoni took his arm, and said something in a low voice, on which Morano kissed the hand he held, notwithstanding Emily’s effort to disengage it, and, wishing her a good evening, with an accent and look she could not misunderstand, returned to his zendaletto with Montoni.

Emily, in her own apartment, considered with intense anxiety all the unjust and tyrannical conduct of Montoni, the dauntless perseverance of Morano, and her own desolate situation, removed from her friends and country. She looked in vain to Valancourt, confined by his profession to a distant kingdom, as her protector; but it gave her comfort to know, that there was, at least, one person in the world, who would sympathize in her afflictions, and whose wishes would fly eagerly to release her. Yet she determined not to give him unavailing pain by relating the reasons she had to regret the having rejected his better judgment concerning Montoni; reasons, however, which could not induce her to lament the delicacy and disinterested affection that had made her reject his proposal for a clandestine marriage. The approaching interview with her uncle she regarded with some degree of hope, for she determined to represent to him the distresses of her situation, and to entreat that he would allow her to return to France with him and Madame Quesnel. Then, suddenly remembering that her beloved La Vallee, her only home, was no longer at her command, her tears flowed anew, and she feared that she had little pity to expect from a man who, like M. Quesnel, could dispose of it without deigning to consult with her, and could dismiss an aged and faithful servant, destitute of either support or asylum. But, though it was certain, that she had herself no longer a home in France, and few, very few friends there, she determined to return, if possible, that she might be released from the power of Montoni, whose particularly oppressive conduct towards herself, and general character as to others, were justly terrible to her imagination. She had no wish to reside with her uncle, M. Quesnel, since his behaviour to her late father and to herself, had been uniformly such as to convince her, that in flying to him she could only obtain an exchange of oppressors; neither had she the slightest intention of consenting to the proposal of Valancourt for an immediate marriage, though this would give her a lawful and a generous protector, for the chief reasons, which had formerly influenced her conduct, still existed against it, while others, which seemed to justify the step, would not be done away; and his interest, his fame were at all times too dear to her, to suffer her to consent to a union, which, at this early period of their lives, would probably defeat both. One sure, and proper asylum, however, would still be open to her in France. She knew that she could board in the convent, where she had formerly experienced so much kindness, and which had an affecting and solemn claim upon her heart, since it contained the remains of her late father. Here she could remain in safety and tranquillity, till the