Page:Edgar Huntly, or The Sleep Walker.djvu/73

 virgin innocence, who had done all that in him lay to devote her youth to guilt and misery. What were the limits of his power? How may he exert the parental prerogatives?

"To sleep while these images were haunting me, was impossible; I passed the night in continual motion; I strode, without ceasing, across the floor of my apartment; my mind was wrought to a higher pitch than I had ever before experienced. The occasion, accurately considered, was far from justifying the ominous inquietudes which I then felt: how then should I account for them?

"Sarsefield probably enjoyed his usual slumber: his repose might not be perfectly serene; but when he ruminated on impending or possible calamities, his tongue did not cleave to his mouth, his throat was not parched with unquenchable thirst, he was not incessantly stimulated to employ his superfluous fertility of thought in motion: if I trembled for the safety of her whom I loved, and whose safety was endangered by being the daughter of this miscreant, had he not equal reason to fear for her whom he also loved, and who, as the sister of this ruffian, was encompassed by the most alarming perils? Yet he probably was calm, while I was harassed by anxieties.

"Alas! the difference was easily explained! Such was the beginning of a series ordained to hurry me to swift destruction—such were the primary tokens of the presence of that power by whose accursed machinations I was destined to fall. You are startled at this declaration; it is one to which you have been little accustomed: perhaps you regard it merely as an effusion of frenzy. I know what I am saying; I do not build upon conjectures and surmises: I care not indeed for your doubts; your conclusion may be fashioned at your pleasure. Would to Heaven that my belief were groundless, and that I had no reason to believe my intellects to have been perverted by diabolical instigations!

"I could procure no sleep that night; after Sarsefield's departure I did not even lie down: it seemed to me that I could not obtain the benefits of repose otherwise than by placing my lady beyond the possibility of danger.

"I met Sarsefield the next day. In pursuance of the