"I have no doubt," I continued presently, "that, with your consent, my boy will be able to deliver you from this prison--" I used the word at a venture.

Had Hedwig suffered less, and been less cruelly tormented, she would have rebuked me for the expression.

But I recalled her to her position, and her self-control gave way at once.
"Oh, you are right to call it a prison!" she cried.

"It is as much a prison as this chamber hewed out of the rock, where so many a wretch has languished hopelessly; a prison from which I am daily taken out into the sweet sun, to breathe and be kept alive, and to taste how joyful a thing liberty must be! And every day I am brought back, and told that I may be free if I will consent.

Consent! God of mercy!" she moaned, in a sudden tempest of passionate despair.