"Damnation!" exclaimed Lord Edmund vehemently, driven to distraction by this speech; for, strange to tell, though we may be certain of the reality of our own sufferings, they always seem to come with double poignancy when we hear them related by another. "Calm yourself, my son," said Father Morris in his silky tones, eyeing him with about as much compassion as an angler feels for the writhing of a worm upon his hook. "These bursts of passion are unworthy of you." "Oh, father!" cried Edmund, softened almost into tears, "you know not how I loved that woman. Your grave, serious feelings, disciplined by the restraint of a cloister, mortified by your renunciation of all earthly pleasures, can form no idea of the depth and fierceness of mine. Your passions, father, are dead within you; subdued by holy penitence to calmness; but mine rage with the fury of a volcano, and destroy me! O that my fond attachment, my long devoted services, my adoration, should be thus rewarded. Yes--my adoration, for I have adored her, father! I worshipped her like a goddess; and though I doted on her charms, and would have endured unheard-of torments to have been blest with their possession, yet, did I not sacrifice my hopes?--did I not relinquish the treasure when just within my grasp, because her happiness was dearer to me than my own? And now to see her lavish her favours on that boy! She smiled upon him, father, and he dared to take her hand and press it to his lips. I saw him kiss it, not with the calm respect of a kneeling subject, but with the fervour, the impassioned ardour of a lover; and then he looked at her--curses on the thought!--and she did not reprove; but, casting down her eyes, softly blushed consent. Damnation! I cannot endure it."