I loved her, but even then it was with a fierce and ominous love (ominous of what it became). Often in the still evenings, when we stood together watching the sun set; when my tongue trembled, but did not dare to speak; when all soft and sweet thoughts filled the heart and glistened in the eye of that most sensitive and fairy being; when my own brow perhaps seemed to reflect the same emotions,--feelings which I even shuddered to conceive raged within me. Had we stood together in those moments upon the brink of a precipice, I could have wound my arms around her and leaped with her into the abyss. Everything but one nursed my passion; nature, solitude, early dreams, all kindled and fed that fire: Religion only combated it; I knew it was a crime to love any of earth’s creatures as I loved. I used the scourge and the fast;* I wept hot, burning tears; I prayed, and the intensity of my prayer appalled even myself, as it rose from my maddened heart, in the depth and stillness of the lone night: but the flame burned higher and more scorchingly from the opposition; nay, it was the very knowledge that my love was criminal that made it assume so fearful and dark a shape. “Thou art the cause of my downfall from Heaven!” I muttered, when I looked upon Isora’s calm face: “thou feelest it not, and I could destroy thee and myself,--myself the criminal, thee the cause of the crime!” * I need not point out to the novel-reader how completely the character of Aubrey has been stolen in a certain celebrated French romance. But the writer I allude to is not so unmerciful as M. de Balzac, who has pillaged scenes in “The Disowned” with a most gratifying politeness. It must have been that my eyes betrayed my feelings that Isora loved me not, that she shrank from me even at the first: why else should I not have called forth the same sentiments which she gave to you? Was not my form cast in a mould as fair as yours? did not my voice whisper in as sweet a tone? did I not love her with as wild a love? Why should she not have loved me? I was the first whom she behold: she would--ay, perhaps she would have loved me, if you had not come and marred all. Curse yourself, then, that you were my rival! curse yourself that you made my heart as a furnace, and smote my brain with frenzy; curse--O sweet Virgin, forgive me!--I know not,--I know not what my tongue utters or my hand traces! You came, then, Morton, you came; you knew her; you loved her; she loved you. I learned that you had gained admittance to the cottage, and the moment I learned it, I looked on Isora, and felt my fate, as by intuition: I saw at once that she was prepared to love you; I saw the very moment when that love kindled from conception into form; I saw--and at that moment my eyes reeled and my ears rang as with the sound of a rushing sea, and I thought I felt a cord snap within my brain, which has never been united again.