house. The room usually occupied by the
family was on the ground floor, and I cautiously approached the
window. Mr Somerville and Emily were both there. He was reading aloud;
she sat at the table with a book before her: but her thoughts, it was
evident, were not there; she had inserted her taper fingers into
the ringlets of her hair, until the palms of her hand reached her
forehead; then, bending her head towards the table, she leaned on her
elbows, and seemed absorbed in the most melancholy reflections.

"This, too, is my work," said I; "this fair flower is blighted, and
withering by the contagious touch of my baneful hand. Good Heaven!
what a wretch am I! whoever loves me is rewarded by misery. And what
have I gained by this wide waste and devastation, which my wickedness
has spread around me? Happiness? no, no--that I have lost for ever.
Would that _my_ loss were all! would that comfort might visit the soul
of this fair creature and another. But I dare not--I cannot pray; I
am at enmity with God and man. Yet I will make an effort in favour of
this victim of my baseness. O God," continued I, "if the prayers of an
outcast like me can find acceptance, not for myself, but for her, I
ask that peace which the world cannot give; shower down thy blessings
upon her, alleviate her sorrows, and erase from her memory the
existence of such a being as myself. Let not my hateful image hang as
a blight upon her beauteous frame."

Emily resumed her book, when her father had ceased reading aloud; and
I saw her wipe a tear from her cheek.

The excitement occasioned by this scene, added to my previous illness,
from the effects of which I had not sufficiently recovered, caused a
faintness; I sat down under the window, in hopes that it would pass
off. It did not, however; for I fell, and lay on the turf in a state
of insensibility, which must have lasted nearly half an hour. I
afterwards learned from Clara, that Emily had opened the window, it
being a French one, to walk out and recover herself. By the bright
moon-light, she perceived me lying on the ground. Her first idea was,
that I had committed suicide; and, with this impression, she shut
the window, and tottering to the back part of the room, fainted. Her
father ran to her assistance, and she fell into his arms. She was
taken up to her room, and consigned to the care of her woman, who put
her to bed; but she was unable to give any account of herself, or the
cause of her disorder,