with perfect sincerity, he and his sister would instantly leave Gerolstein. Sarah participated in the prince's affection, but, preferring death to dishonour, she could only be the wife of his highness.
This exalted flight of ambition stupefied the doctor, who had never imagined that Sarah's imagination soared so high. A marriage surrounded by numberless difficulties and dangers appeared impossible to Polidori, and he frankly told Seyton the reasons why the Grand Duke would never submit to such a union. Seyton agreed in the importance of the reasons, but proposed, as a mezzo termini which should meet all objections, a marriage, which, although secret, should be legal, and only avowed after the decease of the Grand Duke. Sarah was of a noble and ancient house, and such a union was not without precedent. Seyton gave the prince eight days to decide; his sister could not longer endure the cruel anguish of uncertainty, and, if she must renounce Rodolph's love, she must act up to her painful resolve as promptly as might be.
Certain that he could not mistake Sarah's views, the doctor was sorely perplexed. He had three ways before him—to inform the Grand Duke of the matrimonial project, to open Rodolph's eyes as to the manœuvres of Tom and Sarah, to lend himself to the marriage. But to inform the Grand Duke would be to alienate from him for ever the heir presumptive to the throne. To enlighten Rodolph on the interested views of Sarah was to expose himself to the reception which a lover is sure to give when she whom he loves is depreciated in his eyes; and then, what a blow for the vanity or the heart of the young prince, to let him know that it was for his royal rank alone that the lady was desirous to wed him! On the other hand, by lending himself to this match, Polidori bound Rodolph and Sarah to him by a tie of the strongest gratitude, or, at least, by the complicity of a dangerous act. No doubt, all might be discovered, and the doctor exposed to the anger of the Grand Duke, but then the marriage would have been concluded, the union legal. The storm would blow over, and the future sovereign of Gerolstein would become the more bound to Polidori, in proportion as the doctor had undergone greater dangers in his service. After much consideration, therefore, he resolved on serving Sarah, but with a certain qualification, which we will presently refer to.
Rodolph's passion had reached a height almost of frenzy. Violently excited by constraint, and the skilful management of Sarah, who pretended to feel still more than he did the insurmountable obstacles which honour and duty placed between them and their liberty, in a few days more the young prince would have betrayed himself. Thus, when the doctor proposed that he must never see his enchantress again, or possess her by a secret marriage, Rodolph threw himself on Polidori's neck, called him his saviour, his friend, his father; he only wished that the temple and the priest were at hand, that he might marry her that instant. The doctor resolved (for reasons of his own) to undertake the management of all. He found a priest—witnesses; and the union (all the formalities of which were carefully scrutinised and verified by Seyton) was secretly celebrated during a temporary absence of the Grand Duke at a conference of the German Diet. The prophecy of the Scotch soothsayer was fulfilled—Sarah wedded the heir to a throne.
Without quenching the fire of his love, possession rendered Rodolph more circumspect, and cooled down that violence which might have compromised the secret of his passion for Sarah; but, directed by Seyton and the doctor, the young couple managed so well, and observed so much circumspection towards each other, that they eluded all detection.
An event, impatiently desired by Sarah, soon turned this calm into a tempest—she was about to become a mother. It was then that this woman evinced all those exactions which were so new to, and so much astonished, Rodolph. She protested, with hypocritical tears streaming from her eyes, that she could no longer support the constraint in which she lived; a constraint rendered the more insupportable by her pregnancy. In this extremity she boldly proposed to the young prince to tell all to his father, who was, as well as the Dowager Grand Duchess, fonder than ever of her. No doubt, she added, he will be very angry, greatly enraged, at first, but he loves his son so tenderly, so blindly, and had for her (Sarah) so strong an affection, that his paternal anger would gradually subside, and she would at last take in the court of Gerolstein the rank which was due to her, she might say in a double sense, because she was about to give birth to a child, which would be the heir presumptive to the Grand Duke. These pretensions alarmed Rodolph: he knew the deep attachment which his father had for him, but he also well knew the inflexibility of his principles with regard to all the duties of a prince. To all these objections Sarah replied, unmoved:
"I am your wife in the presence of God and men. In a short time, I shall no longer be able to conceal my situation; and I ought not to blush at that of which I am, on the contrary, so proud, and would desire openly to acknowledge."
The expectation of posterity had redoubled Rodolph's tenderness for Sarah, and, placed between the desire to accede to her wishes and the dread of his father's wrath, he experienced the bitterest anguish. Seyton sided with his sister.
"The marriage is indissoluble," said he to his royal brother-in-law; "the Grand Duke may exile you from his court—you and your wife—nothing more; but he loves you too much to have recourse to such an extremity. He will endure what he cannot prevent."
These reasons, strong enough in themselves, did not soothe Rodolph's anxieties. At this juncture, Seyton was charged by the Grand Duke with an errand to visit several breeding studs in Austria. This mission, which he could not refuse, would only detain him a fortnight: he set out with much regret, and in a very important moment for his sister. She was chagrined, yet satisfied, at the departure of her brother; for she would lose his advice, but then he would be safe from the Grand Duke's anger if all were discovered. Sarah promised to keep Seyton fully informed, day by day, of the progress of events, so important to both of them; and, that they might correspond more surely and secretly, they agreed upon a cipher, of which Polidori also held the key. This precaution alone proves that Sarah had other matters to tell her brother of besides her love for Rodolph. In truth, this selfish, cold, ambitious woman had not felt the ice of her heart melt even by the beams of the passionate love which had been breathed to her. Her maternity was only with her a means of acting more effectually on Rodolph, and had no softening effect on her iron soul. The youth, headlong love, and inexperience of the prince, who was hardly more than a child, and so perfidiously ensnared into an inextricable position, hardly excited an interest in the mind of this selfish creature; and, in her confidential communications with him, she complained, with disdain and bitterness, of the weakness of this young man, who trembled before the most paternal of German princes, who lived, however, very long! In a word, this correspondence between the brother and sister clearly developed their unbounded selfishness, their ambitious calculations, their impatience, which almost amounted to homicide, and laid bare the springs of that dark conspiracy crowned by the marriage of Rodolph. One of Sarah's letters to her brother was abstracted by Polidori, the channel of their mutual communications; for what purpose we shall see hereafter.
A few days after Seyton's departure, Sarah was at the evening court of the Dowager Grand Duchess. Many of the ladies present looked at her with an astonished air, and whispered to their neighbours. The Grand Duchess Judith, in spite of her ninety years, had a quick ear and a sharp eye, and this little whispering did not escape her. She made a sign to one of the ladies in waiting to come to her, and from her she learned that everybody was remarking that the figure of Miss Sarah Seyton of Halsbury was less slender, less delicate in its proportions than usual. The old princess adored her young protégée and would have answered to God himself for Sarah's virtue. Indignant at the malevolence of these remarks, she shrugged her shoulders, and said aloud, from the end of the saloon in which she was sitting:
"My dear Sarah, come here."
Sarah rose. It was requisite to cross the circle to reach the place where the princess was seated, who was anxious most kindly to destroy the rumour that was circulated, and, by the simple fact of thus crossing the room, confound her calumniators, and prove triumphantly that the fair proportions of her protégée had lost not one jot of their symmetry and delicacy. Alas! the most perfidious enemy could not have devised a better plan than that suggested by the worthy princess in her desire to defend her protégée. Sarah
