from
Brandon: it was written on the evening before the marriage, which, it
appeared by the same letter, was to be private and concealed. After a
rapturous burst of hope and joy, it continued thus:--

"Yes, Julia, I recant my words; I have no belief that you or I shall
ever have cause hereafter for unhappiness. Those eyes that dwelt so
tenderly on mine; that hand whose pressure lingers yet in every
nerve of my frame; those lips turned so coyly, yet, shall I say,
reluctantly from me,--all tell me that you love me; and my fears are
banished. Love, which conquered my nature, will conquer the only
thing I would desire to see altered in yours. Nothing could ever
make me adore you less, though you affect to dread it,--nothing but
a knowledge that you are unworthy of me, that you have a thought for
another; then I should not hate you. No; the privilege of my past
existence would revive; I should revel in a luxury of contempt, I
should despise you, I should mock you, and I should be once more
what I was before I knew you. But why do I talk thus? My bride,
my blessing, forgive me!"

In concluding our extracts from this correspondence, we wish the
reader to note, first, that the love professed by Brandon seems of
that vehement and corporeal nature which, while it is often the least
durable, is often the most susceptible of the fiercest extremes of
hatred or even of disgust; secondly, that the character opened by this
sarcastic candour evidently required in a mistress either an utter
devotion or a skilful address; and thirdly, that we have hinted at
such qualities in the fair correspondent as did not seem sanguinely to
promise either of these essentials.

While with a curled yet often with a quivering lip the austere and
sarcastic Brandon slowly compelled himself to the task of proceeding
through these monuments of former folly and youthful emotion, the
further elucidation of those events, now rapidly urging on a fatal and
dread catastrophe, spreads before us a narrative occurring many years
prior to the time at which we are at present arrived.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

Clem. Lift the dark veil of years! Behind, what waits?
A human heart. Vast city, where reside
All glories and all vilenesses; while foul,
Yet silent, through the roar of passions rolls
The river of the Darling Sin, and bears