that this young creature
would one day or other have laid at his feet the burnt-offering of her
heart, and then, what could he have done? If Potts had been less endowed
with genius, or less armed in honesty, he had not anticipated this
peril, or, foreseeing, bad undervalued it. But he both saw and feared
it. How very differently had a libertine reasoned out this situation!"
And then I thought how wicked I might have been,--a monster of crime
and atrocity. Every one knows the sensation of lying snugly a-bed on a
stormy night, and, as the rain plashes and the wind howls, drawing more
closely around him the coverlet, and the selfish satisfaction of his own
comfort, heightened by all the possible hardships of others outside. In
the same benevolent spirit, but not by any means so reprehensible, is it
pleasant to imagine oneself a great criminal, standing in the dock, to
be stared at by a horror-struck public, photographed, shaved, prison
costumed, exhorted, sentenced, and tien, just as the last hammer has
driven the last nail into the scaffold, and the great bell has tolled
out, to find that you are sitting by your wood fire, with your curtain
drawn, your uncut volume beside you, and your peculiar weakness, be it
tea, or sherry-cobbler, at your elbow. I constantly take a "rise" out
of myself in this fashion, and rarely a week goes over that I have not
either poisoned a sister or had a shot at the Queen. It is a sort
of intellectual Russian bath, in which the luxury consists in the
exaggerated alternative between being scalded first and rolled in the
snow afterwards. It was in this figurative snow I was now disporting
myself, pleasantly and refreshingly, and yet remorse, like a sturdy dun,
stood at my gate, and refused to go away.

Had I, indeed, treated her harshly,--had I rejected the offer of her
young and innocent heart? Very puzzling and embarrassing question this,
and especially to a man who had nothing of the coxcomb in his nature,
none of that prompting of self-love that would suggest a vain reply.
I felt that it was very natural _she_ should have been struck by the
attractive features of my character, but I felt this without a particle
of conceit. I even experienced a sense of sorrow as I thought over
it, just as a conscientious siren might have regretted that nature had
endowed her with such a charming voice; and this duty--for it was a
duty--discharged, I bethought me of my own future. I had a mission,
which was to