"Ay, you may well ask, and wonder. I can not tell you. I was a fool--I
was mad! I knew not what I did. From one thing I went on to another, and
I knew nothing of what had been done until all was done. Some devil was
at my elbow--some devil at my heart. I feel it there still; I am not yet
free. I could do more--I could go yet farther. I could finish the damned
work by another crime; and no crime either, since I should be the only
victim, and well deserving a worse punishment."

The offender was deeply excited, and felt poignantly. For some time it
tasked all the powers of Ralph's mind, and the seductive blandishments
of the maiden herself, to allay the fever of his spirit; when, at
length, he was something restored, the dialogue was renewed by an
inquiry of the old lady as to the future destination of her anticipated
son-in-law, for whom, indeed, she entertained a genuine affection.

"And what is to be the end of all this, Mark? What is it your purpose to
do--where will you fly?"

"To the nation, mother--where else? I must fly somewhere--give myself up
to justice, or--" and he paused in the sentence so unpromisingly begun,
while his eyes rolled with unaccustomed terrors, and his voice grew
thick in his throat.

"Or what--what mean you by that word, that look, Mark? I do not
understand you; why speak you in this way, and to me?" exclaimed the
maiden, passionately interrupting him in a speech, which, though
strictly the creature of his morbid spirit and present excitement, was
perhaps unnecessarily and something too wantonly indulged in.

"Forgive me, Katharine--dear Katharine--but you little know the madness
and the misery at my heart."

"And have you no thought of mine, Mark? this deed of yours has brought
misery, if not madness, to it too; and speech like this might well be
spared us now!"

"It is this very thought, Kate, that I have made you miserable, when I
should have striven only to make you happy. The thought, too, that I
must leave you, to see you perhaps never again--these unman--these
madden me, Katharine; and I feel desperate like the man striving with
his brother upon the plank in the broad ocean."

"And why part, Mark? I see not this necessity!"

"Would you have me stay and perish? would you behold me, dragged perhaps
from your own arms before the stern judge, and to a dreadful death? It
will be so if I stay much longer. The state will not suffer this thing
to pass over. The crime is too large--to