“Oh sir,” said Matilda, “a good man may be forced on an ill office: but I can distinguish the man from his duty.” She presented to him her hand, which he kissed respectfully, and simultaneously with the contact thirty-two invisible arrows plunged at once into his heart, one from every point of the compass of his pericardia.     

       “Well, father,” added Matilda, “I must go to the woods.”      

       “Must you?” said the baron; “I say you must not.”      

       “But I am going,” said Matilda     

       “But I will have up the drawbridge,” said the baron.     

       “But I will swim the moat,” said Matilda.     

       “But I will secure the gates,” said the baron.     

       “But I will leap from the battlement,” said Matilda.     

       “But I will lock you in an upper chamber,” said the baron.     

       “But I will shred the tapestry,” said Matilda, “and let myself down.”      

       “But I will lock you in a turret,” said the baron, “where you shall only see light through a loophole.”      

       “But through that loophole,” said Matilda, “will I take my flight, like a young eagle from its eerie; and, father, while I go out freely, I will return willingly: but if once I slip out through a loop-hole——”        She paused a moment, and then added, singing,—     

  The love that follows fain Will never its faith betray:  But the faith that is held in a chain Will never be found again, If a single link give way. 

       The melody acted irresistibly on the harmonious propensities of the friar, who accordingly sang in his turn,—     

  For hark! hark! hark! The dog doth bark, That watches the wild deer’s lair. The hunter awakes at the peep of the dawn, But the lair it is empty, the deer it is gone, And the hunter knows not where. 

       Matilda and the friar then sang together,—     

  Then 

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