you; the same
delicacy of proportion; the same graceful curvature of limb, only less
rounded, less womanly. But you must be younger by about two years than
she then was. Your age cannot exceed seventeen; and time will supply
what your mere girlhood renders you deficient in."

There was a cool licence of speech--a startling freedom of manner--in
the latter part of this address, that disappointed not less than it
pained and offended the unhappy Clara. It seemed to her as if the
illusion she had just created, were already dispelled by his language,
even as her own momentary interest in the fierce man had also been
destroyed from the same cause. She shuddered; and sighing bitterly,
suffered her tears to force themselves through her closed lids upon her
pallid cheek. This change in her appearance seemed to act as a check on
the temporary excitement of Wacousta. Again obeying one of these rapid
transitions of feeling, for which he was remarkable, he once more
assumed an expression of seriousness, and thus continued his narrative.

CHAPTER IX.

"It boots not now, Clara, to enter upon all that succeeded to my first
introduction to your mother. It would take long to relate, not the
gradations of our passion, for that was like the whirlwind of the
desert, sudden and devastating from the first; but the burning vow, the
plighted faith, the reposing confidence, the unchecked abandonment that
flew from the lips, and filled the heart of each, sealed, as they were,
with kisses, long, deep, enervating, even such as I had ever pictured
that divine pledge of human affection should be. Yes, Clara de
Haldimar, your mother was the child of nature THEN. Unspoiled by the
forms, unvitiated by the sophistries of a world with which she had
never mixed, her intelligent innocence made the most artless avowals to
my enraptured ear,--avowals that the more profligate minded woman of
society would have blushed to whisper even to herself. And for these I
loved her to my own undoing.

"Blind vanity, inconceivable folly!" continued Wacousta, again pressing
his forehead with force; "how could I be so infatuated as not to
perceive, that although her heart was filled with a new and delicious
passion, it was less the individual than the man she loved. And how
could it be otherwise, since I was the first, beside her father, she
had ever seen or recollected to have seen? Still, Clara de Haldimar,"
he pursued, with haughty energy, "I was not always th