t?
By night, by day, never shall I be able
To travel half a mile alone.--Good Lady!
Forgive me!--Saints forgive me. Had I thought
It would have come to this!--

IDONEA What brings you hither? speak!

BEGGAR (pointing to MARMADUKE)
This innocent Gentleman. Sweet heavens! I told him
Such tales of your dead Father!--God is my judge,
I thought there was no harm: but that bad Man,
He bribed me with his gold, and looked so fierce.
Mercy! I said I know not what--oh pity me--
I said, sweet Lady, you were not his Daughter--
Pity me, I am haunted;--thrice this day
My conscience made me wish to be struck blind;
And then I would have prayed, and had no voice.

IDONEA (to MARMADUKE)
Was it my Father?--no, no, no, for he
Was meek and patient, feeble, old and blind,
Helpless, and loved me dearer than his life
--But hear me. For _one_ question, I have a heart
That will sustain me. Did you murder him?

MARMADUKE No, not by stroke of arm. But learn the process:
Proof after proof was pressed upon me; guilt
Made evident, as seemed, by blacker guilt,
Whose impious folds enwrapped even thee; and truth
And innocence, embodied in his looks,
His words and tones and gestures, did but serve
With me to aggravate his crimes, and heaped
Ruin upon the cause for which they pleaded.
Then pity crossed the path of my resolve:
Confounded, I looked up to Heaven, and cast,
Idonea! thy blind Father, on the Ordeal
Of the bleak Waste--left him--and so he died!--

[IDONEA sinks senseless; Beggar, ELEANOR, etc., crowd round, and bear
her off.]

Why may we speak these things, and do no more;
Why should a thrust of the arm have such a power,
And words that tell these things be heard in vain?
_She_ is not dead. Why!--if I loved this Woman,
I would take care she never woke again;
But she WILL wake, and she will weep for me,
And say, no blame was mine--and so, poor fool,
Will waste her curses on another name.

[He walks about