g that could fill the imagination
of a man possessed of a vacillating, cowardly, and cruel heart, with the
exception only of any thing that could border upon penitence or remorse.
That Miss Folliard was not indifferent to him is true; but the feeling
which he experienced towards her contained only two elements--sensuality
and avarice. Of love, in its purest, highest, and holiest sense, he was
utterly incapable; and he was not ignorant himself that, in the foul
attachment which he bore her, he was only carrying into effect the
principles of his previous life--those of a private debauchee, and a
miser. That amiable, but unhappy and distracted, lady spent that whole
evening in making preparations for her flight with Reilly. Her manner
was wild and excited; indeed, so much so that the presence of mind and
cool good sense, for which her maid Connor was remarkable, were scarcely
sufficient to guide and direct her in this distressing emergency. She
seemed to be absorbed by but one thought, and that was of her father.
His affection for her enlarged and expanded itself in her loving heart,
with a force and tenderness that nearly drove her into delirium. Connor,
in the meantime, got all things ready, she herself having entrusted the
management of every thing to her. The unhappy girl paced to and fro her
room, sobbing and weeping bitterly, wringing her hands, and exclaiming
from time to time:

"Oh, my father! my dear and loving father! is this the return I am
making you for your tenderness and affection? what am I about to do?
what steps am I going to take? to leave you desolate, with no heart for
yours to repose upon! Alas! there was but one heart that you cared for,
and in the duty and affection of that all your hopes for my happiness
lay; and now, when you awake, you will find that that heart, the very
heart | on which you rested, has deserted you! When you come down to
breakfast in the morning, and find that your own Helen, your only one,
has gone--oh! who will sustain, or soothe, or calm you in the frenzied
grief of your desolation? But alas! what can I do but escape from that
cowardly and vindictive villain--the very incarnation of oppression
and persecution; the hypocrite, the secret debauchee, the mean, the
dastardly, whose inhuman ambition was based upon and nurtured by blood?
Alas! I have but the one remedy--flight with my noble minded lover,
whom that dastardly villain would have hunted, even to his murder, or
an ignomi