Page:Edgar Huntly, or The Sleep Walker.djvu/89

 she was the author, had now added to her former acts that of rescuing me from the last of mischiefs.

"I threw the weapon on the floor. The zeal which prompted her to seize my arm, this action occasioned to subside, and to yield place to those emotions which this spectacle was calculated to excite. She watched me in silence and with an air of ineffable solicitude. Clarice, governed by the instinct of modesty, wrapped her bosom and face in the bedclothes, and testified her horror by vehement but scarcely articulate exclamations.

"I moved forward, but my steps were random and tottering: my thoughts were fettered by reverie, and my gesticulations destitute of meaning; my tongue faltered without speaking, and I felt as if life and death were struggling within me for the mastery.

"My will, indeed, was far from being neutral in this contest. To such as I, annihilation is the supreme good: to shake off the ills that fasten on us by shaking off existence, is a lot which the system of Nature has denied to man. By escaping from life, I should be delivered from this scene, but should only rush into a world of retribution, and be immersed in new agonies.

"I was yet to live; no instrument of my deliverance was within reach; I was powerless: to rush from the presence of these women, to hide me for ever from their scrutiny and their upbraiding, to snatch from their minds all traces of the existence of Clithero, was the scope of unutterable longings.

"Urged to flight by every motive of which my nature, was susceptible, I was yet rooted to the spot: had the pause been only to be interrupted by me, it would have lasted for ever.

"At length Mrs. Lorimer, clasping her hands and lifting them, exclaimed, in a tone melting into pity and grief—'Clithero, what is this? How came you hither, and why?"

"I struggled for utterance.—'I came to murder you!—Your brother has perished by my hands!—Fresh from the commission of this deed, I have hastened hither to perpetrate the same crime upon you!'

My brother!' replied Mrs. Lorimer, with new