Alone, and in secret, did he plot his plans to circumvent them. Lost now to every feeling of shame and honor, he repelled no scheme, however base, that presented itself; and though the better and more manly exercise of his faculties drooped and withered under his scorching passion, a deeper, deadlier cunning than he ever knew before, sweltered and forged unceasingly the most crafty implements for his hellish purpose. He would trust not an iota to the assistance of other hands, but assumed the whole burden of contriving and executing upon himself. Not a breath did he breathe of his infamous design to human ears. His demeanor in public possessed all the semblance of urbanity and good feeling that he once felt; but his interior Vulcan reposed not from his craft. Every piece of information that he could unsuspectingly acquire concerning either poor Roderick or Ella, he stored up and revolved in his aristocratic mind, digesting it with his moral venom, as a viper would revolve and masticate with poison its loath-some morsel. He learned from many sources, partially from herself, the particulars of Ella’s history, as far as was known; and contrasting several portions with certain circumstances that had fallen under his observation when in England, was astonished at the result of his machinations, which now doubled upon himself, to involve him too in their fatal entanglement. Thus far he had stood apart, aloof, as it were, upon a height above his contemplated victims. His baser passions had thrown aside the drapery of virtue and honor which once veiled the lovely woman from the gaze of rude thought, and he could look down upon her very graces as an object of his intended prey; but when the artful interlocking of his web and woof turned up to his astonished eyes, in gathered forms, the whole and real picture of his contemplated deed; when his study brought to light the astounding fact that Ella could claim close kindred with the proudest titles of the British peerage, his craven spirit of profligacy slunk away, for the time awed, but not quelled, by the air of reverence, and veneration that breathed upon it. At its return, elevated, softened, warmed, but not purified, by its admixture of romance, he felt his sternest anger giving way, his haughtiest pride tottering, his very soul melting into admiration and love; he reeled from his position aloof, and writhed a whole burnt offering among the other victims to his passion. His subtle ingenuity soon brought to the crucible the extraordinary change in his sentiments toward the unconscious girl, and the analysis did not dispel the new charm that enveloped her. He saw it was perfectly natural, and the only fruit of his discovery was a resolution to bring the charm to operate upon her own mind—it would open the avenue to a secret discontent with her present position, unfold a vast and snare-beset field to the vagaries of a romantic imagination, and bring