We met no more where we had been wont to meet; and my young heart's
spring of happiness seemed for ever withered.

But here again, I began to reflect, my path was crossed--my hopes were
blighted--by my uncle. I heard, too, that his tongue had been free with
my name; that the blistering censure of his austere virtue had fallen
upon my actions. I writhed under the contumely. My wounded spirit was
insatiate for vengeance. I meditated, deeply, how I could inflict it, so
as to strike the blow where he was most vulnerable. I did not brood long
over my dark purpose. The love I still bore his daughter, was _now_
mingled with the hatred I bore towards himself; and I exulted in the
thought, that I should perhaps be able to gratify, at one and the same
moment, two of the fiercest passions of my nature--lust and revenge!

I SUCCEEDED!

In these two words let me shroud a tale of horror. Harriet was my
victim! Ask not how. _I_ triumphed! _She_ fell! An angel might
have fallen as she did, and lost no purity. But her stainless heart was
too proud in virtue to palter and equivocate with circumstances. She
never rose from what she deemed her bridal bed. And ere twenty summers
had fanned her cheek, the grave-worm banqueted upon its loveliness.

This was my _first_ crime. The recollection of it is engraven upon
my memory by an awful catastrophe. The night wind that sung _her_
funeral dirge, howled with dismal fury through the burning ruins of my
paternal mansion. Yes! that very night, as if it were in mercy to them,
my father and my mother both perished in the flames which reduced
the house itself to cinders. They were seen at the windows of their
bedchamber, shrieking for aid; but before any could be procured, the
flooring gave way, and they sunk at once into the yawning furnace that
roared beneath. Their remains, when afterwards dug out, were a few
shovelsfull of blackened ashes; except my father's right hand, which was
found clasped in that of my mother, and both unconsumed. I followed
these sad relics to the sepulchre. But with the tears I shed, there was
blended a feeble consolation at the thought they had died before they
knew the fate of Harriet; and a frightful joy, that another pang was
added to the wretchedness of my uncle.

I can well remember what a feeling of loneliness and desolation now took
possession of me. Time, however, rolled on; and I grew callous, if not
reconciled. I could not disguise from myself that the more