Page:Paul Clifford Vol 3.djvu/80

72 remembrance of Lucy in all her charms, her beauty, her love, her tender and innocent heart; Lucy all perfect, and lost to him for ever, banished every other reflection, and only left him the sick sensation of despondency and despair. "What avails my struggle for a better name?" he thought. "She will never know it. Whatever my future lot, she can never share it. My punishment is fixed,—it is worse than a death of shame; it is a life without hope! Every moment I feel, and shall feel to the last, the pressure of a chain that may never be broken or loosened! And yet, fool that I am! I cannot leave this country without seeing her again, without telling her, that I have really looked my last. But have I not twice told her that? Strange fatality! but twice have I spoken to her of love, and each time it was to tear myself from her at the moment of my confession. And even now something that I have no power to resist, compels me to the same idle and weak indulgence. Does destiny urge me? Ay, perhaps to my destruction! Every hour a thousand deaths encompass me. I have now obtained all for which I seemed to linger. I have won by a new crime, enough to bear