Page:Edgar Huntly, or The Sleep Walker.djvu/88

 dying friend, at a solitary mansion in the mountains of Donegal: here it had been her resolution to remain till her friend should breathe her last. Fraught with this persuasion, knowing this to be the place and hour of repose of my lady, hurried forward by the impetuosity of my own conceptions, deceived by the faint gleam which penetrated through the curtain and imperfectly irradiated the features which bore at all times a powerful resemblance to those of Mrs. Lorimer, I had rushed to the brink of this terrible precipice!

"Why did I linger on the verge? Why, thus perilously situated, did I not throw myself headlong? The steel was yet in my hand—a single blow would have pierced my heart, and shut out from my remembrance and foresight the past and the future.

"The moment of insanity had gone by, and I was once more myself: instead of regarding the act which I had meditated as the dictate of compassion or of justice, it only added to the sum of my ingratitude, and gave wings to the whirlwind that was sent to bear me to perdition.

"Perhaps I was influenced by a sentiment which I had not leisure to distribute into parts: my understanding was no doubt bewildered in the maze of consequences which would spring from my act. How should I explain my coming hither in this murderous guise, my arm lifted to destroy the idol of my soul, and the darling child of my patroness? In what words should I unfold the tale of Wiatte, and enumerate the motives that terminate in the present scene? What penalty had not my infatuation and cruelty deserved? What could I less than turn the dagger's point against my own bosom?

"A second time the blow was thwarted and diverted; once more this beneficent interposer held my arm from the perpetration of a new iniquity—once more frustrated the instigations of that demon, of whose malice a mysterious destiny had consigned me to be the sport and the prey.

"Every new moment added to the sum of my inexpiable guilt, murder was succeeded in an instant by the more detestable enormity of suicide. She to whom my ingratitude was flagrant in proportion to the benefits of which