ed at his own powerlessness to testify towards her his scorn and
contempt. At such times as these he seemed even to himself on the verge
of madness. But he had saner moments--moments when his better nature
triumphed, and pride resigned for a brief space her stormy empire to the
benigner sway of the contending passion.

In the midst of those terrific tornados, which in the West Indies and
elsewhere carry in their path, over immense districts, ruin and
desolation, there is a pause, often of considerable duration, caused,
the scientific inform us, by the calm in the centre of the atmospheric
vortex of which they are composed. Such a calm would occasionally rest
upon the mind of Philip Hayforth, over the length and breadth of which
the whirlwind of passion had lately been tearing. One night, after one
of those hidden transports, which the proud man would have died rather
than any mortal eye should have scanned, he threw himself upon his bed
(for he rarely _went to bed_ now, in the accepted sense of the phrase)
in a state approaching exhaustion, mental and bodily. By degrees a sort
of dream-like peace fell upon his spirit; the present vanished away, and
the past became, as it were, once more a living reality. He thought of
Emily Sherwood as he had first seen her--a vision of loveliness and
grace. He thought of her as he had beheld her almost the last time on
that clear summer morning, and like refreshing dew on his scorched and
desolated heart fell the remembrance of her gentle words and loving
looks. Could they have deceived? Ah no! and his whole nature seemed
suddenly softened. He seemed to see her before him now, with her angel
face and her floating white robes; he seemed even yet to be looking into
those soft, bright eyes, and to read there again, as he had read before,
love unspeakable, truth unchangeable. His heart was filled with a
yearning tenderness, an intense and longing fondness, and he extended
his arms, as if to embrace that white-robed image of truth and
gentleness: but she was not there; it was but her spirit which had come
to still his angry passions with the calm of trust and love. And in the
fond superstition that so it was, he sprang from his couch, seized a
pen, and wrote to her a passionate, incoherent epistle, telling her that
she had tried him almost beyond his strength, but that he loved and
believed in her still, and if she answered immediately, that he was
ready to forgive her for all the pain she h