e life a curse worse
than to take it away. I pointed to the insect that was
crawling on the table, and asked if it would not be mercy to
kill it, and cruelty, damnable cruelty, to tear off a wing one
day, and a limb the next, and so on, till nothing remained of
its tortured frame but the quivering pulse of life. I spoke of
men who die on the scaffold, or who drag on existence in jails
and hulks, and whose hearts are not so hard, whose spirits are
not so brutal, as those of others who come into our houses,
who sit at our tables, with smiles on their lips and poison in
their tongues, whose language is refined, and whose thoughts
are devilish.

Strange and terrible words they were which I spoke in that
hour; there was eloquence and power in them, for what is so
eloquent as the pent-up agony of years, when at last it finds
a vent? What is so powerful as the outpouring of the soul,
when it breaks down the barriers it has long respected?

They quailed before my glance, those two men whose victim I
was. Mr. Escourt's pale cheek was flushed, and Henry's grew
pale. He trembled for himself and for me. The fabric which he
had raised by his cunning, and maintained by his arts, was
tottering to its base. Like to Samson in the temple of the
Philistines, strength had returned to me in the hour of
abasement; and I was dragging down upon him, and upon myself,
the ruin which had so long hung over my head.

"I would advise you to choose another theme for the display of
your eloquence, than the apology of _murder_."

A convulsive shudder seized me as Edward addressed to me these
terrible words. If he had charged me with the guilt of murder,
I could not have trembled more violently.

"You are ill, Mrs. Middleton; I am sure you are ill!"
exclaimed Sir Edmund, springing forward to support me.

I felt myself falling, and stretched out my hand to take hold
of Edward's; when I grasped it, it was as cold as ice. He led
me out of the room; and when he had placed me on the sofa in
my dressing-room, he rang the bell. As soon as my maid came
in, he left me without a look or a word.

I did not attempt to recall him; I was stunned and exhausted.
I felt an inexpressible longing to forget the anguish I was
enduring; and, while my maid was for a moment out of the room,
I hastily took a large dose of laudanum, which first
stupified, and then sent me to sleep.

When I woke again it was with that sense of complete
bewilderment which that sort o