The main chance is gone.

There remains the one with which the countess threatened him if he would not marry you--your immediate death.
Against that, stands the possibility of penal servitude in the galleys for a man and woman of high rank and social position--only the possibility, to be sure, but a possibility, nevertheless.

Remember that to those who know the whole extent and criminality of the count's fraud the case appears very much worse than it does to you, who now hear of it for the first time, in a general way, and who do not understand the nature of such transactions.

I have been a confessor many years, princess.

I know how few penitents can be made to believe that those they have injured will pardon them, if they frankly ask forgiveness.