the most lovely, Elizabeth with trembling steps and a fluttering heart
approached the altar, where Henry of Montfort waited her arrival. Ida
now stepped forward; she threw back her veil, and prepared to fasten the
wreath of Innocence among the golden ringlets of her friend: a similar
garland hung on her arm, with which she was afterwards to present the
bridegroom. Occupied entirely with the task of decorating Elizabeth, she
had not yet cast her eyes on young Montfort; she had not observed, that
he started on beholding her; she had not heard the name of “_Rosanna_,”
which escaped from his trembling lips. She now turned to him for the
purpose of offering him the other wreath; she already extended her hand;
when fixing her eyes on his countenance, she uttered a cry expressive at
once of the utmost surprise and terror, attempted but in vain to
pronounce the name of Erwin Melthal, and would have sank upon the
ground, had not Constantia rushed forward and received her in her
supporting arms.
Constantia still wore the habit of a Nun; the altar was adorned exactly
in the same manner, and the blazing lamps shed the same mysterious light
along the fretted roots and gloomy arches, as on that day when Erwin and
Rosanna knelt at the shrine of St. Engeltruda, poured forth the most
solemn vows of eternal fidelity, and heard Constantia devote the breaker
of those vows to unceasing shame and sorrow.—Erwin Melthal (or rather
Henry of Montfort, for alas! they formed but one) had long believed the
lovely Sisters to be no more the inhabitants of earth: Constantia on the
other hand was in the same error respecting Erwin. The sudden appearance
of one, whom she had long since numbered with the dead, imprest upon her
countenance something of that serious, that strangely awful expression,
which struck him so forcibly, when she united his hand with Rosanna’s in
the Chapel of Engelberg. He recollected her words—“Should either of you
rend asunder the bonds, with which I now unite your fates for ever, that
instant shall my form (be I living, or be I dead) stand before you
threatening and awful, to reproach you with your crimes.”—These
recollections, and the unexpected appearance of the Sisters, at the very
moment when he was on the point of giving his hand to another, made him
consider the whole scene as a supernatural vision! He believed, that the
forms which stood before him, were creatures of another world; his brain
was unable to support the shock; the surrounding objects floated before
his eyes, his senses forsook him, and he sank without animation at the
feet of his astonished bride.
END OF THE THIRD VOLUME.
PRINTED BY D. N. SHURY, BERWICK-STREET, SOHO.
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● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ Errata listed in volume IV have been applied to this volume.
○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
when a predominant form was found in this book.
○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).