is to Isora. I suffered her to cherish a mistake profitable
to my disguise; but I saw at once that it might betray me, if you ever
met and conferred at length with Gerald upon this point, and I exacted
from Isora a pledge that she would effectually and forever bind you
not to breathe a single suspicion to him. When I had left the room, I
returned once more to warn her against uniting herself with you. Wretch,
selfish, accursed wretch that you were, why did you suffer her to
transgress that warning?

I fled from the house, as a fiend flies from a being whom he has
possessed. I returned at night to look up at the window, and linger by
the door, and keep watch beside the home which held Isora. Such, in her
former abode, had been my nightly wont. I had no evil thought nor foul
intent in this customary vigil,--no, not one! Strangely enough, with the
tempestuous and overwhelming emotions which constituted the greater
part of my love was mingled--though subdued and latent--a stream of the
softest, yea, I might add almost of the holiest tenderness. Often after
one of those outpourings of rage and menace and despair, I would fly
to some quiet spot and weep till all the hardness of my heart was wept
away. And often in those nightly vigils I would pause by the door and
murmur, "This shelter, denied not to the beggar and the beggar's child,
this would you deny to me if you could dream that I was so near you. And
yet, had you loved me, instead of lavishing upon me all your hatred and
your contempt,--had you loved me, I would have served and worshipped you
as man knows not worship or service. You shudder at my vehemence now: I
could not then have breathed a whisper to wound you. You tremble now at
the fierceness of my breast: you would then rather have marvelled at its
softness."

I was already at my old watch when you encountered me: you addressed me;
I answered not; you approached me, and I fled. Fled there--there was the
shame, and the sting of my sentiments towards you. I am not naturally
afraid of danger, though my nerves are sometimes weak and have sometimes
shrunk from it. I have known something of peril in late years when my
frame has been bowed and broken--perils by storms at sea, and the knives
of robbers upon land--and I have looked upon it with a quiet eye.
But you, Morton Devereux, you I always feared. I had seen from your
childhood others whose nature was far stronger than mine yield and
recoil at yours; I had seen the