"I know her heart, countess. She is too proud to mourn and weep. But would she not ask her mother to come and live with her, were it not that then she would be obliged to give up ever hearing any news of the child? If she only knew what it cost me to be a spy, so that I can write to her now and then how it fares with her hardhearted husband--the poor, innocent child! And yet, gracious countess, if I could ever succeed in tying the broken bond again, in freeing this ungrateful, inconstant man from this snare of unworthy passion, in leading him back again to his rightful wife--"

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