its still--its serene--its touching
beauty, shone upon me like a vision. My heart warmed as I saw it--my
pulse seemed to wake from its even slowness. I was young once more.
Young! the youth, the freshness, the ardour--not of the frame only, but
of the soul. But I then only saw, or spoke to her--scarce knew her--not
loved her--nor was it often that we met. When we did so, I felt haunted,
as by a holy spirit, for the rest of the day--an unquiet yet delicious
emotion agitated all within--the south wind stirred the dark waters of
my mind, but it passed, and all became hushed again. It was not for two
years from the time we first saw each other, that accident brought us
closely together. I pass over the rest. We loved! Yet oh what struggles
were mine during the progress of that love! How unnatural did it seem to
me to yield to a passion that united me with my kind; and as I loved
her more, how far more urgent grew my fear of the future! That which had
almost slept before awoke again to terrible life. The soil that covered
the past might be riven, the dead awake, and that ghastly chasm separate
me for ever from HER! What a doom, too, might I bring upon that breast
which had begun so confidingly to love me! Often--often I resolved to
fly--to forsake her--to seek some desert spot in the distant parts of
the world, and never to be betrayed again into human emotions! But as
the bird flutters in the net, as the hare doubles from its pursuers, I
did but wrestle--I did but trifle--with an irresistible doom. Mark how
strange are the coincidences of fate--fate that gives us warnings and
takes away the power to obey them--the idle prophetess--the juggling
fiend! On the same evening that brought me acquainted with Madeline
Lester, Houseman, led by schemes of fraud and violence into that part of
the country, discovered and sought me! Imagine my feelings, when in the
hush of night I opened the door of my lonely home to his summons, and
by the light of that moon which had witnessed so never-to-be-forgotten a
companionship between us, beheld my accomplice in murder after the lapse
of so many years. Time and a course of vice had changed and hardened,
and lowered his nature; and in the power, at the will of that nature,
I beheld myself abruptly placed. He passed that night under my roof.
He was poor. I gave him what was in my hands. He promised to leave that
part of England--to seek me no more.

"The next day I could not bear my own thoughts,