Not many weeks previous to that night, I had seen one whom to see was to love! Love!--I tell you, Morton, that /that/ word is expressive of soft and fond emotion, and there should be another expressive of all that is fierce and dark and unrelenting m the human heart!--all that seems most like the deadliest and the blackest hate, and yet is not hate! I saw this being, and from that moment my real nature, which had slept hitherto, awoke! I remember well it was one evening in the beginning of summer that I first saw her. She sat alore in the little garden beside the cottage door, and I paused, and, unseen, looked over the slight fence that separated us, and fed my eyes with a loveliness that I thought till then only twilight or the stars could wear! From that evening I came, night after night, to watch her from the same spot; and every time I beheld her the poison entered deeper and deeper into my system. At length I had an opportunity of being known to her, of speaking to her, of hearing her speak, of touching the ground she had hallowed, of entering the home where she dwelt! I must explain: I said that both Gerald and myself corresponded privately with Montreuil; we were both bound over to secrecy with regard to you; and this, my temper and Gerald's coolness with you rendered an easy obligation to both;--I say my temper, for I loved to think I had a secret not known to another; and I carried this reserve even to the degree of concealing from Gerald himself the greater part of the correspondence between me and the Abbe. In his correspondence with each of us, Montreuil acted with his usual skill; to Gerald, as the elder in years, the more prone to enterprise, and the manlier in aspect and in character, was allotted whatever object was of real trust or importance. Gerald it was who, under pretence of pursuing his accustomed sports, conferred with the various agents of intrigue who from time to time visited our coast; and to me the Abbe gave words of endearment and affected the language of more entire trust. "Whatever," he would say, "in our present half mellowed projects, is exposed to danger, but does not promise reward, I entrust to Gerald; hereafter, far higher employment, under far safer and surer auspices, will be yours. We are the heads: be ours the nobler occupation to plan; and let us leave to inferior natures the vain and perilous triumph to execute what we design."