Page:Marietta, or the Two Students.djvu/23

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and now she lavished it all upon Eugene.

No one legally authorized had united them, and yet she was his; but hark, how feeble was the tenure of that heart which she held.

Since her seducer had forsaken and left her to the horrors of prostitution, she had clung to Eugene. She was his mistress.

Thoughtless young man! you should have won her from evil and back to virtue, instead of plunging her deeper in the vortex of sin.

You should—Eugene—you should have reproved her kindly as an erring sister.

But you did not, and that moment—crisis we might say—has passed forever.

You were wrong there, Eugene, and the time will come, when that reflection will be a source of unending regret. It will avail but little then, for mayhap the form of that young girl who loves you, will be cold, very cold, and far beyond the reach of sympathy. Think of that, and when you leave the embraces of Cecil to seek the retirement of home and the society of sisters, remember that she has neither the one or the other.

If these suggestions will make your slumbers sweeter or deeper, you are welcome to them,

'Twas past midnight when he left Cecil and sought his own residence. The occurrences of the day and evening passed in review before him, and some of them were not pleasing; the reasons for which the reader will see more plainly anon. Cecil lay upon her couch so recently vacated by her lover, and thought bitterly of the three relative conditions of life—the past, the present and the future. The first contrasted strangely with the second, and the second was made still more wretched by the prospective misery of the third, which in her mind was more portentous of evil.

A short time had elapsed after the departure of Eugene, when those sounds which created alarm on farther occasions were again renewed. She listened to the cautious moving of heavy feet, and the low voices of persons who evidently wished not to be heard.

The same odor came to her nostrils, which almost nauseated her previously. Arising partially in bed, she placed her eye to a small fissure in the wall, and saw the same person whom she had seen once before, with another and not much better looking individual. They were now tearing the shroud from a dead body. A faintness crept over the poor girl when she made this fearful discovery, and she could scarcely refrain from shrieking with terror, but with a strong effort she checked the impulse, and kept her eyes fastened upon what was passing before her. Trembling, she marked the indifference with which they handled the corpse, and that coarseness and brutal want of feeling which characterized every movement.

"Had they committed murder?—What was their object?—What would they do with that body?" were questions which naturally suggested themselves to Cecil. But she was not long in doubt—the truth flashed in upon her, and the object of this proceeding was but too evident. She was witnessing unobserved, the midnight doings of the "Body SuatchersSnatchers [sic]."

They had rifled the grave of its dead, and were now putting the finishing touch to their work. It was ready for the dissecter's knife. The agitation of Cecil seemed to increase instead of subsiding, and she felt—why she could not tell—a strange trembling curiosity to see the face of that corpse. With a rough