and speculative eye? When, I say, all this became evident to my
appalled senses, when I could no longer hide it from my soul, nor throw
it off from those perceptions which trembled to receive it, is it to be
wondered at that suspicions, of a nature fearful and exciting, crept in
upon my spirit, or that my thoughts fell back aghast upon the wild tales
and thrilling theories of the entombed Morella? I snatched from the
scrutiny of the world a being whom destiny compelled me to adore, and
in the rigorous seclusion of my home, watched with an agonizing anxiety
over all which concerned the beloved.

And as years rolled away, and I gazed day after day upon her holy, and
mild, and eloquent face, and poured over her maturing form, day after
day did I discover new points of resemblance in the child to her mother,
the melancholy and the dead. And hourly grew darker these shadows of
similitude, and more full, and more definite, and more perplexing, and
more hideously terrible in their aspect. For that her smile was like her
mother's I could bear; but then I shuddered at its too perfect identity,
that her eyes were like Morella's I could endure; but then they, too,
often looked down into the depths of my soul with Morella's own intense
and bewildering meaning. And in the contour of the high forehead, and
in the ringlets of the silken hair, and in the wan fingers which buried
themselves therein, and in the sad musical tones of her speech, and
above all--oh, above all, in the phrases and expressions of the dead on
the lips of the loved and the living, I found food for consuming thought
and horror, for a worm that would not die.

Thus passed away two lustra of her life, and as yet my daughter
remained nameless upon the earth. "My child," and "my love," were the
designations usually prompted by a father's affection, and the rigid
seclusion of her days precluded all other intercourse. Morella's name
died with her at her death. Of the mother I had never spoken to the
daughter, it was impossible to speak. Indeed, during the brief period of
her existence, the latter had received no impressions from the outward
world, save such as might have been afforded by the narrow limits of her
privacy. But at length the ceremony of baptism presented to my mind,
in its unnerved and agitated condition, a present deliverance from the
terrors of my destiny. And at the baptismal font I hesitated for a name.
And many titles of the wise and beautiful, of old