His noble countenance glowed with anger: his eyes darted lightning; his long flowing hair shaded his lofty brow and his face like a sombre veil.

He was beautiful in his wrath, beautiful as the archangel Michael trampling the dragon beneath his feet.

And thus he bent down his head toward her; thus he gazed at her with flashing and contemptuous looks.
"I forgive you ?" said he.

"Never will that be! Ha, shall I forgive you ?--you, who have made my entire life a ridiculous lie, and transformed the tragedy of my love into a disgusting farce?
Oh, Geraldine, how I have loved you; and now you have become to me a loathsome spectre, before which my soul shudders, and which I must execrate! You have crushed my life, and even robbed my death of its sanctity; for now it is no longer the martyrdom of my love, but only the savage mockery of my credulous heart.

Oh, Geraldine, how beautiful it would have been to die for you!--to go to death with your name upon my lips!--to bless you!--to thank you for my happy lot, as the axe was already uplifted to smite off my head! How beautiful to think that death does not separate us, but is only the way to an eternal union; that we should lose each other but a brief moment here, to find each other again forevermore!" Geraldine writhed at his feet like a worm trodden upon; and her groans of distress and her smothered moans were the heartrending accompaniment of his melancholy words.
"But that is now all over!" cried Henry Howard; and his face, which was before convulsed with grief and agony, now glowed again with wrath.