Page:Edgar Huntly, or The Sleep Walker.djvu/72

 incapable of fear from this quarter: she would spurn at the mention of precautions against the hatred of her brother; her inquietude would merely be awakened on his own account.

"I was overwhelmed with perplexity; perhaps, if he were sought out, and some judgment formed of the kind of danger to be dreaded from him, by a knowledge of his situation and views, some expedient might be thence suggested.

"But how should his haunts be discovered? This was easy: he had intimated the design of applying again for admission to his sister. Let a person be stationed at hand, who, being furnished with an adequate description of his person and dress, shall mark him when he comes, and follow him when he retires, and forthwith impart to us the information on that head which he shall be able to collect.

"My friend concurred in this scheme: no better could, for the present, be suggested. Here ended our conference.

"I was thus supplied with a new subject of reflection; it was calculated to fill my mind with dreary forebodings: the future was no longer a scene of security and pleasure: it would be hard for those to partake of our fears, who did not partake of our experience. The existence of Wiatte was the canker that had blasted the felicity of my patroness: in his reappearance on the stage there was something portentous; it seemed to include in it consequences of the utmost moment, without my being able to discover what these consequences were.

"That Sarsefield should be so quickly followed by his arch-foe—that they started anew into existence, without any previous intimation, in a manner wholly unexpected, and at the same period: it seemed as if there lurked under those appearances a tremendous significance, which human sagacity could not uncover. My heart sunk within me when I reflected that this was the father of my Clarice—he by whose cruelty her mother was torn from the enjoyment of untarnished honour, and consigned to infamy and an untimely grave—he by whom herself was abandoned in the helplessness of infancy, and left to be the prey of obdurate avarice, and the victim of wretches who traffic in