d horrible remorse usurped the place of passion in her
breast.--She arose, and gazed fearfully around her; there lay the body
of her murdered victim, its stony eyes turned towards her, and seeming
to reproach her for the deed. She could not remain in that awful
chamber, in the presence of that accusing corpse, whose blood seemed to
cry out for vengeance; she ran from it, and at every step imagined that
her dead husband was pursuing her, to bring her back.

Not for worlds would she have remained that night in the house; hastily
throwing on a bonnet and shawl, she issued forth into the street. She
cared not where she went, so long as she escaped from the vicinity of
that scene of murder. In a state of mind bordering on distraction, the
wretched woman wandered about the streets until a late hour; the
disorder of her dress, the wildness of her appearance, induced many whom
she met to suppose her to be intoxicated; and several riotous young men,
returning from a theatre, believing her to be a courtezan, treated her
with the utmost rudeness, at the same time calling her by the most
opprobrious names, until a gentleman who was passing rescued her from
their brutality.

Midnight came, and still was the unhappy Julia a wanderer through the
streets. At length she found herself upon Charlestown bridge; and being
much fatigued, she paused and leaned against the railing, uncertain what
to do or where to go. That hour was the most wretched of her life; her
brain was dizzy with excitement--her heart racked with remorse--her
limbs weak with fatigue, and numbed with cold. The spirit of Mr. Hedge
seemed to emerge from the water, and invite her with outstretched arms
to make the fatal plunge; and when she thought of his unvaried kindness
to her, his unbounded generosity, and implicit faith in her honor, how
bitterly she reproached herself for her base ingratitude and abominable
crime! Oh, how gladly would she have given up her miserable life, could
she but have undone that fearful deed! And even in that wretched hour
she cursed Frank Sydney, as being the cause of her crime and its
attendant misery.

'May the lightning of heaven's wrath sere his brain and scorch his
heart!' she said--'had he not, disguised as the Italian, won my love
and driven me to desperation, I now should be happy and comparatively
guiltless. But, by his infernal means, I have become a murderess and an
outcast--perhaps doomed to swing upon the scaffold! But no, no;--