Can such reluctance, such emotions, spring

   From the mere nicety of maiden fear?

   The source is in her heart; I dread to trace it,

   Must then a parent's mild authority

   Be turn'd a cruel engine, to inflict

   Wounds on the gentle bosom of my child?

   And am I doom'd to register each day

   But by some new distraction?—Edmund! Edmund!

   In apprehending worse even than thy loss,

   My sense, confused, rests on no single grief;

   For that were ease to this eternal pulse,

   Which, throbbing here, says, blacker fates must follow;

 Enter Count and Austin, meeting. 

Count

Austin

 Count. Welcome, thrice welcome! By our holy mother,

   My house seems hallow'd, when thou enter'st it.

   Tranquillity and peace dwell ever round thee;

   That robe of innocent white is thy soul's emblem,

   Made visible in unstain'd purity.

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