emper; it might not have rushed into the last and most awful
crime, but for the damning instigation and the atrocious craft of one,
who (Aubrey rightly said) could wield and mould the unhappy victim
at his will. Might not, did I say? Nay, but for Montreuil's accursed
influence, had I not Aubrey's own word that that crime never _would
have_ been committed? He had resolved to stifle his love,--his heart had
already melted to Isora and to me,--he had already tasted the sweets of
a virtuous resolution, and conquered the first bitterness of opposition
to his passion. Why should not the resolution thus auspiciously begun
have been mellowed into effect? Why should not the grateful and awful
remembrance of the crime he had escaped continue to preserve him from
meditating crime anew? And (oh, thought, which, while I now write,
steals over me and brings with it an unutterable horde of emotions!) but
for that all-tainting, all-withering influence, Aubrey's soul might at
this moment have been pure from murder and Isora--the living Isora--by
my side!

What wonder, as these thoughts came over me, that sense, feeling,
reason, gradually shrank and hardened into one stern resolve? I looked
as from a height over the whole conduct of Montreuil. I saw him in our
early infancy with no definite motive (beyond the general policy of
intrigue), no fixed design, which might somewhat have lessened the
callousness of the crime, not only fomenting dissensions in the hearts
of brothers; not only turning the season of warm affections, and yet of
unopened passion, into strife and rancour, but seizing upon the inherent
and reigning vice of our bosoms, which he should have seized to crush,
in order only by that master-vice to weave our characters, and sway
our conduct to his will, whenever a cool-blooded and merciless policy
required us to be of that will the minions and the tools. Thus had
he taken hold of the diseased jealousy of Aubrey, and by that handle,
joined to the latent spring of superstition, guided him on his wretched
course of misery and guilt. Thus, by a moral irresolution in Gerald had
he bowed him also to his purposes, and by an infantine animosity between
that brother and myself, held us both in a state of mutual hatred which
I shuddered to recall. Readily could I now perceive that my charges or
my suspicions against Gerald, which, in ordinary circumstances, he might
have dispassionately come forward to disprove, had been represented to