Page:Edgar Huntly, or The Sleep Walker.djvu/259

 that Clithero had killed him. Clithero had not been known to return, and was no where to be found. He then was the bearer of these tidings; for none but he could have found access or egress, without disturbing the servants.

"These doubts were at length at an end. In a broken and confused manner, and after the lapse of some days, the monstrous and portentous truth was disclosed: After our interview, Mrs. Lorimer and her daughter had retired to the same chamber; the former had withdrawn to her closet, and the latter to bed. Some one's entrance alarmed Mrs. Lorimer; and coming forth after a moment's pause, the spectacle which Clithero has too faithfully described, presented itself.

"What could I think? A life of uniform hypocrisy, or a sudden loss of reason, were the only suppositions to be formed. Clithero was the parent of fury and abhorrence in my heart: in either case I started at the name—I shuddered at the image of the apostate or the maniac.

"What! kill the brother whose existence was interwoven with that of his benefactress and his friend!—then hasten to her chamber, and attempt her life! —lift a dagger to destroy her who had been the author of his being and his happiness!

"He that could meditate a deed like this, was no longer man: an agent from hell had mastered his faculties; he was become the engine of infernal malice, against whom it was the duty of all mankind to rise up in arms, and never to desist till, by shattering it to atoms, its power to injure was taken away.

"All enquiries to discover the place of his retreat were vain. No wonder, methought, that he wrapped himself in the folds of impenetrable secresy [sic]; curbed, checked, baffled in the midst of his career, no wonder that he shrunk into obscurity—that he fled from justice and revenge—that he dared not meet the rebukes of that eye which, dissolving in tenderness, or flashing with disdain, had ever been irresistible.

"But how shall I describe Mrs. Lorimer's condition? Clithero she had cherished from his infancy: he was the stay, the consolation, the pride of her life. His projected