ce had been
communicated to me or any one else, might not have been able (when he
and Dawson first went to the spot,) to resist so great a temptation.
However, there was a slight crevice in this fact, for a sunbeam of hope
to enter, and I was too sanguine, by habitual temperament and present
passion, not to turn towards it from the general darkness of my
thoughts.

With Glanville I was often brought into immediate contact. Both united
in the same party, and engaged in concerting the same measures, we
frequently met in public, and sometimes even alone. However, I was
invariably cold and distant, and Glanville confirmed rather than
diminished my suspicions, by making no commentary on my behaviour, and
imitating it in the indifference of his own. Yet, it was with a painful
and aching heart, that I marked, in his emaciated from and sunken cheek,
the gradual, but certain progress of disease and death; and while all
England rung with the renown of the young, but almost unrivalled orator,
and both parties united in anticipating the certainty and brilliancy
of his success, I felt how improbable it was, that, even if his crime
escaped the unceasing vigilance of justice, this living world would long
possess any traces of his genius but the remembrance of his name. There
was something in his love of letters, his habits of luxury and expence,
the energy of his mind--the solitude, the darkness, the hauteur, the
reserve, of his manners and life, which reminded me of the German
Wallenstein; nor was he altogether without the superstition of that
evil, but extraordinary man. It is true, that he was not addicted to
the romantic fables of astrology, but he was an earnest, though secret,
advocate of the world of spirits. He did not utterly disbelieve the
various stories of their return to earth, and their visits to the
living; and it would have been astonishing to me, had I been a less
diligent observer of human inconsistencies, to mark a mind otherwise
so reasoning and strong, in this respect so credulous and weak; and
to witness its reception of a belief, not only so adverse to ordinary
reflection, but so absolutely contradictory to the philosophy it
passionately cultivated, and the principles it obstinately espoused.

One evening, I, Vincent, and Clarendon, were alone at Lady Roseville's,
when Reginald and his sister entered. I rose to depart; la belle
Contesse would not suffer it; and when I looked at Ellen, and saw her
blush at my g