wound my arms around
her and leaped with her into the abyss. Everything but one nursed my
passion; nature, solitude, early dreams, all kindled and fed that fire:
Religion only combated it; I knew it was a crime to love any of earth's
creatures as I loved. I used the scourge and the fast;* I wept hot,
burning tears; I prayed, and the intensity of my prayer appalled even
myself, as it rose from my maddened heart, in the depth and stillness
of the lone night: but the flame burned higher and more scorchingly from
the opposition; nay, it was the very knowledge that my love was criminal
that made it assume so fearful and dark a shape. "Thou art the cause of
my downfall from Heaven!" I muttered, when I looked upon Isora's calm
face: "thou feelest it not, and I could destroy thee and myself,--myself
the criminal, thee the cause of the crime!"

* I need not point out to the novel-reader how completely the character
of Aubrey has been stolen in a certain celebrated French romance. But
the writer I allude to is not so unmerciful as M. de Balzac, who has
pillaged scenes in "The Disowned" with a most gratifying politeness.

It must have been that my eyes betrayed my feelings that Isora loved me
not, that she shrank from me even at the first: why else should I not
have called forth the same sentiments which she gave to you? Was not my
form cast in a mould as fair as yours? did not my voice whisper in as
sweet a tone? did I not love her with as wild a love? Why should she not
have loved me? I was the first whom she behold: she would--ay, perhaps
she would have loved me, if you had not come and marred all. Curse
yourself, then, that you were my rival! curse yourself that you made
my heart as a furnace, and smote my brain with frenzy; curse--O sweet
Virgin, forgive me!--I know not,--I know not what my tongue utters or my
hand traces!

You came, then, Morton, you came; you knew her; you loved her; she loved
you. I learned that you had gained admittance to the cottage, and
the moment I learned it, I looked on Isora, and felt my fate, as by
intuition: I saw at once that she was prepared to love you; I saw the
very moment when that love kindled from conception into form; I saw--and
at that moment my eyes reeled and my ears rang as with the sound of a
rushing sea, and I thought I felt a cord snap within my brain, which has
never been united again.

Once only, after your introduction to the cottage, did I think of
confiding to you my