From the tenderest passion the most savage impulse may arise: in the deep recesses of fondness, sometimes is implanted the root of cruelty; and from loving William with unbounded lawless affection, she found herself depraved so as to become the very object which could most of all excite her own horror! Still, at delirious intervals, that passion, which, like a fatal talisman, had enchanted her whole soul, held out the delusive prospect that "William might yet relent;" for, though she had for ever discarded the hope of peace, she could not force herself to think but that, again blest with his society, she should, at least for the time that he was present with her, taste the sweet cup of "forgetfulness of the past," for which she so ardently thirsted. "Should he return to me," she thought in those paroxysms of delusion, "I would to _him_ unbosom all my guilt; and as a remote, a kind of unwary accomplice in my crime, his sense, his arguments, ever ready in making light of my sins, might afford a respite to my troubled conscience." While thus she unwittingly thought, and sometimes watched through the night, starting with convulsed rapture at every sound, because it might possibly be the harbinger of him, _he_ was busied in carefully looking over marriage articles, fixing the place of residence with his destined bride, or making love to her in formal process. Yet, Agnes, vaunt!--he sometimes thought on thee--he could not witness the folly, the weakness, the vanity, the selfishness of his future wife, without frequently comparing her with thee. When equivocal words and prevaricating sentences fell from her lips, he remembered with a sigh thy candour--that open sincerity which dwelt upon thy tongue, and seemed to vie with thy undisguised features, to charm the listener even beyond the spectator. While Miss Sedgeley eagerly grasped at all the gifts he offered, he could not but call to mind "that Agnes's declining hand was always closed, and her looks forbidding, every time he proffered such disrespectful tokens of his love." He recollected the softness which beamed from her eyes, the blush on her face at his approach, while he could never discern one glance of tenderness from the niece of Lord Bendham: and the artificial bloom on her cheeks was nearly as disgusting as the ill-conducted artifice with which she attempted gentleness and love. But all these impediments were only observed as trials of his fortitude--his prudence could overcome his aversion, and thus he valued himself upon his manly firmness.