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>"That is more than I dare say," replied Ellena, scarcely able to sustain herself.
"Hah! is it even so!" said the Monk; with encreasing emotion. His visage now became so terrible, that Ellena struggled to liberate her arm, and supplicated that he would not detain her. He was silent, and still gazed upon her, but his eyes, when she had ceased to struggle, assumed the fixt and vacant glare of a man, whose thoughts have retired within themselves, and who is no longer conscious to surrounding objects.
"I beseech you to release me!" repeated Ellena, "it is late, and I am far from home."
"That is true," muttered Schedoni, still grasping her arm, and seeming to reply to his own thoughts rather than to her words, -- "that is very true."
"The evening is closing fast," continued Ellena, "and I shall be overtaken by the storm."
Schedoni still mused, and then muttered -- "The storm, say you? Why ay, let it come."
As he spoke, he suffered her arm to drop, but still held it, and walked slowly towards the house. Ellena, thus compelled to accompany him, and yet more alarmed both by his looks, his incoherent answers, and his approach to her prison, renewed her supplications and her efforts for liberty, in a voice of piercing distress, adding, "I am far from home, father; night is coming on. See how the rocks darken! I am far from home, and shall be waited for."
"That is false!" said Schedoni, with emphasis; "and you know it to be so."
"Alas! I do," replied Ellena, with mingled shame and grief, "I have no friends to wait for me!"
"What do those deserve, who deliberately utter falsehoods," continued the Monk, "who deceive, and slatter young men to their destruction?"
"Father!" exclaimed the astonished Ellena.
"Who disturb the peace of families -- who trepan, with wanton arts, the heirs of noble houses -- who -- hah! what do such deserve?"
Overcome with astonishment and terror, Ellena remained silent. She now understood that Schedoni, so