Page:Edgar Huntly, or The Sleep Walker.djvu/247

 "No: his tale was a catalogue of crimes and miseries of which he was the author and sufferer. You know not his motives, his horrors."

"His deeds were monstrous and infernal—his motives were sordid and flagitious: to display all their ugliness and infamy was not his province:—no, he did not tell you that he stole at midnight to the chamber of his mistress—a woman who astonished the world by her loftiness and magnanimity, by indefatigable beneficence and unswerving equity—who had lavished on this wretch, whom she snatched from the dirt, all the goods of fortune, all the benefits of education, all the treasures of love, every provocation to gratitude, every stimulant to justice.

"He did not tell you, that, in recompense for every benefit, he stole upon her sleep, and aimed a dagger at her breast. There was no room for flight, or ambiguity, or prevarication: she whom he meant to murder stood near, saw the lifted weapon, and heard him confess and glory in his purposes.

"No wonder that the shock bereft her for a time of life. The interval was seized by the ruffian to effect his escape; the rebukes of justice were shunned by a wretch conscious of his inexpiable guilt. These things he has hidden from you, and has supplied their place by a tale specious as false."

"No: among the number of his crimes, hypocrisy is not to be counted. These things are already known to me: he spared himself too little in the narrative; the excellences of his lady, her claims to gratitude and veneration, were urged beyond their true bounds. His attempts upon her life were related; it is true that he desired and endeavoured to destroy her."

"How! has he told you this?"

"He has told me all. Alas! the criminal intention has been amply expiated!"

"What mean you? Whence, and how came he hither? Where is he now? I will not occupy the same land, the same world with him. Have this woman and her daughter lighted on the shore haunted by this infernal and implacable enemy?"