For his
sake she refused even the title of marchioness, offered her in
the moment of youthful and ardent passion, and clung, with
deathless truth, to her fisher-lover. The blood of the
Montmorencis is fierce and hot, and brooks no opposition" (Sir
Norman thought of Miranda, and inwardly owned that that was a
fact); "and the marquis, in his jealous wrath, both hated and
loved her at the same time, and vowed deadly vengeance against
her bourgeois lover. That vow he kept. The young fisherman was
found one morning at his lady-love's door without a head, and the
bleeding trunk told no tales.
"Of course, for a while, she was distracted and so on; but when
the first shock of her grief was over, my father carried her off,
and forcibly made her his wife. Fierce hatred, I told you, was
mingled with his fierce love, and before the honeymoon was over
it began to break out. One night, in a fit of jealous passion,
to which he was addicted, he led her into a room she had never
before been permitted to enter; showed her a grinning human
skull, and told her it was her lover's! In his cruel exultation,
he confessed all; how he had caused him to be murdered; his head
severed from the body; and brought here to punish her, some day,
for her obstinate refusal to love him.
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