Page:Edgar Huntly, or The Sleep Walker.djvu/80

 ; she had arraigned my impatience of obligation as criminal, and condemned every scheme I had projected for freeing myself from the burden which her beneficence had laid upon me. The impassioned and vehement anxiety with which in former days she had deprecated the vengeance of her lover against Wiatte rung in my ears: my senses were shocked anew by the dreadful sounds—'Touch not my brother: wherever you meet with him, of whatever outrage he be guilty, suffer him to pass in safety: despise me—abandon me—kill me—all this I can bear even from you; but spare, I implore you, my unhappy brother: the stroke that deprives him of life will not only have the same effect upon me, but will set my portion in everlasting misery!'

"To these supplications I had been deaf: it is true I had not rushed upon him unarmed, intending no injury, nor expecting any; of that degree of wickedness I was perhaps incapable. Alas! I have immersed myself sufficiently deep in crimes—I have trampled under foot every motive dear to the heart of honour—I have shown myself unworthy the society of men!

"Such were the turbulent suggestions of that moment. My pace slackened—I stopped, and was obliged to support myself against a wall; the sickness that had seized my heart penetrated every part of my frame. There was but one thing wanting to complete my distraction:—'My lady,' said I, 'believed her fate to be blended with that of Wiatte:—who shall affirm that the persuasion is a groundless one? She had lived and prospered, notwithstanding the general belief that her brother was dead: she would not hearken to the rumour—Why? Because nothing less than indubitable evidence would suffice to convince her?—because the counter-intimation flowed from an infallible source? How can the latter supposition be confuted? Has she not predicted the event? The period of terrible fulfilment has arrived: the same blow that bereaved him of life, has likewise ratified her doom. She has been deceived: it is nothing more, perhaps, than a fond imagination—it matters not:—who knows not the cogency of faith?—that the pulses of life are at the command of the will? The bearer