Page:Tales of the Dead.djvu/204

 blast,) that disorder has produced the agitation which, spite of myself, you have witnessed.—Alas! great as have been my sorrows, and heavy as my crime weighs on me, my reason has still preserved its throne: to seek oblivion in idiotcy; to bury the remembrance of my fatal error in temporary derangement; would, I might almost say, be happiness to me. But fate has forbidden such an alleviation, and my impending destiny is not to be guarded against by precaution, cannot be avoided by repentance.”

“Nay,” said Emily, “exaggerated as your self-condemnation makes the fault to which you allude appear, in religion you may find a solace which could efface crimes of much deeper dye than any with which you can possibly charge yourself.”

“Ah! no,” replied the fair Spaniard.—“Religion, it is true, holds out her benignant hand to receive the wandering sinner;—she offers to the stranger a home; she welcomes to her bosom the repentant though blood-stained criminal;—but for crimes like mine, what penitence can atone?—But we waste time,” added she; “the midnight hour approaches; and ere the clock in the turret first announces that dreaded period, much must be done.”

Thus saying, she went into the adjoining oratory, and finding on the little altar at which Emily of-