Weeks passed and still William Edgerton was a resident of M---, and a constant guest at our little cottage. He had, in this time, effectually broken up the harmony and banished the peace which had previously prevailed there. The unhappy young man pursued the same insane course of conduct which had been productive of so much bitterness and trouble to us all before; and, under the influence of my evil demon, I adopted the same blind policy which had already been so fruitful of misery to myself and wife. I gave them constant opportunities together. I found my associates, and pursued my pastimes--pastimes indeed--away from home. Poetry and song were given up--we no longer wandered by the river-side, and upon the green heights of our sacred hill. My evenings were consumed in dreary rambles, alone with my own evil thoughts, and miserable fancies, or consumed with yellow-eyed watching, from porch or tree, upon those privacies of the suspected lovers, in which I had so shamefully indulged before. I felt the baseness of this vocation, but I had not the strength to give it up. I know there is no extenuation for it. I know that it was base! base! base! It is a point of conscience with me, not only to declare the truth, but to call things by the truest and most characteristic names. Let me do my understanding the justice to say that, even when I practised the meanness, I was not ignorant--not insensible of its character. It was the strength only--the courage to do right, and to forbear the wrong--in which I was deficient. It was the blind heart, not the unknowing head to which the shame was attributable, though the pang fell not unequally upon heart and head. Meanwhile, Kingsley returned from Texas. He became my principal companion. We strolled together in my leisure hours by day. We sat and smoked together in his chamber by night. My blind fortitude may be estimated, when the reader is told that Kingsley professed to find me a very agreeable companion. He complimented me on my liveliness, my wit, my humor, and what not--and this, too, when I was all the while meditating, with the acutest feeling of apprehension, upon the very last wrong which the spirit of man is found willing to endure;--when I believed that the ruin of my house was at hand; when I believed that the ruin of my heart and hope had already taken place;--and when, hungering only for the necessary degree of proof which justice required before conviction, I was laying my gins and snares with the view to detecting the offenders, and consummating the last terrible but necessary work of vengeance! But Kingsley did not confine himself altogether to the language of compliment. “Good fellow and good companion as you are, Clifford--and loath as I should be to give up these pleasant evenings, still I think you very wrong in one respect. You neglect your wife.” “Ha! ha! what an idea! You are not serious?” “As a judge.” “Psha! She does not miss me.”