“But what a scene did I select to reconcile me to the loss of the cheerful society I had abandoned! My deserted home seemed haunted by the shadows of the past, and tenanted only by remembrances of former affliction. In my hour of loneliness and sorrow, I had no kind friend to whom to turn for consolation; and for the first time the sterile and gloomy waste over which my future path of life was appointed, filled me with emotions of terror and regret. My very existence appeared blighted through the treachery of others; and all those holy ties which enrich the evening of our days with treasures far clearer than awaited us even into the morning of youth, appeared withheld from me, and me only. Helen, it was then, in that moment of disappointment and bitterness, that the remembrance of thy loveliness, and the suspicion of thine affection conspired to from that fatal passion which has been the bane of thy happiness, and the origin of my guilt. “Avoiding as I scrupulously did the range of apartments inhabited by the unfortunate Lady Greville, several years had passed since I had beheld her; and sometimes when I had been bewildered in the reveries of my own desolate heart, began to doubt her very existence. Yet this unseen being who appeared to occupy no place in the scale of human nature, this unconscious creature who now dwelt in my remembrance like the unreal mockery of a dream, presented an insuperable obstacle to my happiness. I saw my inheritance destined to be wrenched from me “'By an unlineal hand No son of mine succeedingly,' “and I felt myself doomed to resign every enjoyment and every hope for the sake of one to whom the sacrifice availed nothing; one, too, who had permitted me to fold her to my heart in the full confidence of undivided affection, while her own was occupied by a passion whose violence had deprived me of my child, and herself of intellect and health.