"Played her part rarely!" The words sank down into his soul with a chilling weight, that seemed to crush every energy and hope. Played her part! Then he was a dupe—the very dupe of the fiend’s arch mock, to lip a wanton, and believe her chaste—the dupe of a designing harlot; the sworn tool and slave of a murderer—a monster, who had literally sold his own child’s honor. For all the world well knew, that, although Lucia passed for his adopted daughter only, she was his natural offspring by Aurelia Orestilla, before their impious marriage. Well might he gnash his teeth, and beat his breast, and tear his dark hair by handfulls from his head; well might he groan and curse. But oh! the inconsistency of man! While he gave vent to all the anguish of his rage in curses against her, the soft partner of his guilt, and at the same time, its avenger; against the murderer and the traitor, now his tyrant; he utterly forgot that his own dereliction, from the paths of rectitude and honor, had led him into the dark toils, in which he now seemed involved beyond any hope of extrication. He forgot, that to satisfy an insane and unjustifiable love of adventure, and a false curiosity, he had associated himself with a man whom he believed, if he did not actually know, to be infamous and capable of any crime. He forgot, that, admitted into that man’s house in friendship, he had attempted to undermine his daughter’s honor; and had felt no remorse, till he learned that his success was owing to connivance—that his own treason had been met and repaid by deeper treason. He forgot, that for a wanton’s love, he had betrayed the brightest, and the purest being that drew the breath of life, from the far Alps, to the blue waters of the far Tarentum—that he had broken his soul’s plighted faith—that he was himself, first, a liar, perjurer, and villain. Alas! it is the inevitable consequence, the first fruit, as it were, of crime, that guilt is still prolific; that the commission of the first ill deed, leads almost surely to the commission of a second, of a third, until the soul is filed and the heart utterly corrupted, and the wretch given wholly up to the dominion of foul sin, and plunged into thorough degradation. Arvina had thought lightly, if at all, of his first luxurious sin, but now to the depth of his secret soul, he felt that he was emmeshed and entangled in the deepest villainy. All that he ever had yet heard hinted darkly or surmised of Catiline’s gigantic schemes of wickedness, rushed on him, all at once! He doubted nothing any longer; it was clear to him as noonday; distinct and definite as if it had been told to him in so many words; the treason to the state concealed by individual murder; and he, a sworn accomplice—nay, a sworn slave to this murderer and traitor!