For all this she could have better pardoned him than for the supposed deception he had just practised upon her. Thus his doom was just, but it was not given on just grounds. But it happens often enough, as many women could testify, that the doom pronounced by virtue upon vice, by the true upon the false, bears very often much more heavily upon the judge than upon the condemned. The culprit bears up under the blow, while she who sits on the throne of Justice is shaken to pieces by the reverberation. Clare, who felt herself both judge and executioner in one, and whose mind was full of wild plans of vengeance, was herself at the same time the immediate victim. Drearily, more dreary than ever before, the day closed upon her, leaving her all alone in the solitude of those stately rooms, dimly lighted and all so silent. Night was coming--night which, if it brought forgetfulness, would be her best comforter; but it seemed utterly impossible that it could bring forgetfulness, or that sleep should ever come again to her burning, weary, yet wakeful eyelids. She could not read, she could not work; she could think but of one subject, and that was not one which she could exercise any free will about, discussing it reasonably with herself; but one which pursued her, forcing itself into supremacy, driving her thoughts wildly into one channel, whether she would or not. She sat by the table, with her head supported in her two hands, and gazed into the white flame of the lamp till her eyes were almost scorched, while a thousand wild fancies pursued each other through her mind. The moths circled about and about the light, and so did her thoughts about the fatal centre which they had formed for themselves; until the flimsy suicides wove themselves in with her imaginations, and became somehow a part of her and them. She had not energy enough left to save them. “There is another,” she would say to herself; “are they all mad, I wonder? Can’t they feel that it kills them? I wonder where he is now. Oh, I hope he is beginning to feel what a false step he has taken! There is many a woman that will put up with being deceived, but not me--never me. To think he should have known me so little, and he an Arden! I wonder what Edgar will say when he knows: he shall never know. I hate him, but I will never, never betray to any one---- And yet I promised I would interfere. I said it should never occur again. There is another, and another. I wonder why they like it so much. It can’t be for the warmth, for it is warm everywhere to-night. I said it should never occur again---- I was a fool to take any part; what have I to do with--with--that girl? She is not even a village girl, to have a claim upon me. If she likes to be ruined and shamed, that is not my affair. Perhaps she thinks he--loves her, forsooth! Oh, what fools, what fools people are--people and moths! The lamp is choked up with them; what strange, strange, silly creatures! I can’t stop them; and how