servant of his order, rather than
immediately of the exiled House; and I have since heard that even at
that day he had acquired a great reputation among the professors of
the former. You, Morton, he decoyed not into this scheme before he left
England: he had not acquired a sufficient influence over you to trust
you with the disclosure. To Gerald and myself he was more confidential.
Gerald eagerly embraced his projects through a spirit of enterprise;
I through a spirit of awe and of religion. RELIGION! Yes,--then,--long
after,--now,--when my heart was and is the home of all withering and
evil passions, Religion reigned,--reigns, over me a despot and a tyrant.
Its terrors haunt me at this hour; they people the earth and the air
with shapes of ghastly menace! They--Heaven pardon me! what would my
madness utter? Madness?--madness? Ay, _that_ is the real scourge, the
real fire, the real torture, the real hell, of this fair earth!

Montreuil, then, by different pleas, won over Gerald and myself. He left
us, but engaged us in constant correspondence. "Aubrey," he said,
before he departed, and when he saw that I was wounded by his apparent
cordiality towards you and Gerald--"Aubrey," he said, soothing me on
this point, "think not that I trust Gerald or the arrogant Morton as I
trust you. _You_ have my real heart and my real trust. It is necessary
to the execution of this project, so important to the interests of
religion and so agreeable to the will of Heaven, that we should secure
all co-operators: but they, your brothers, Aubrey, are the tools of that
mighty design; you are its friend." Thus it was that, at all times when
he irritated too sorely the vice of my nature, he flattered it into
seconding his views; and thus, instead of conquering my evil passions,
he conquered by them. Curses--No, no, no!--I _will_ be calm.

We returned to Devereux Court, and we grew from boyhood into youth.
I loved you then, Morton. Ah! what would I not give now for one pure
feeling, such as I felt in your love? Do you remember the day on which
you had extorted from my uncle his consent to your leaving us for the
pleasures and pomps of London? Do you remember the evening of that day,
when I came to seek you, and we sat down on a little mound, and talked
over your projects, and you spoke then to me of my devotion and my purer
and colder feelings? Morton, at that very moment my veins burned with
passion!--at that very moment my heart was feeding th