Horrid! horrid is it to say, that the world should take unto itself that awful power claimed by Almighty Omniscience, of visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children, and of making the guiltless offspring more than share the punishment inflicted on the offending parent! But so De Vaux felt that the world does, and that, in his instance, it was not alone the usual contemptible sneer, or still more contemptible neglect, that he was destined to meet; but that he must expect all the venomous pity and malignant compassion which his fall, more than his situation, would excite, and which the hard and unfeeling beings of the earth affect to experience for those they wish most powerfully to depress. Such accumulated feelings were all bitter enough; but there was one more bitter still, more filled with agony and degradation. De Vaux, as we have seen, was engaged to a being full of beauty, and grace, and gentleness, by promises which united them to each other, not alone as persons of high rank and fortune, having found a fitting alliance; but as two people who had known each other from infancy, had grown up in affection, and had for many a year looked forward to their marriage as the means of securing to both the utmost degree of human happiness for life; as the binding on of a talisman, that would shut out from their domestic hearth all the evil things of earth. With De Vaux, these feelings, these anticipations, were even stronger. He loved Marian with the fullest, deepest, most passionate attachment. Towards her his heart was all fire and thrilling energy; and, though there were times when he somewhat doubted that her feelings were of as powerful a kind towards him, yet he believed that she loved him as much as she could love; and perhaps even her slight reserve made him love her the more ardently. The day for their marriage was already fixed; the bridal ornaments were all prepared; their future life had, in the conversation of that very day, been laid out before them as on a map, and Edward de Vaux had as much doubted, when he sprang from his horse, that Marian, in all her beauty, was to be his bride within three short weeks, as he doubted of his own existence.