"This is my office, not thine," said I, apostrophising the bird,
which, alarmed at my near approach, quitted its position, and
disappeared among the surrounding tombs. I sat down, and fixing my
eyes on the name which the tablet bore, ran over, in a hurried manner,
all that part of my career which had been more immediately connected
with the history of Eugenia. I remembered her many virtues; her
self-devotion for my honour and happiness; her concealing herself
from me, that I might not blast my prospects in life by continuing
an intimacy which she saw would end in my ruin; her firmness of
character, her disinterested generosity, and the refinement of
attachment which made her prefer misery and solitude to her own
gratification in the society of the man she loved. She had, alas! but
one fault, and that fault was loving me. I could not drive from my
thoughts, that it was through my unfortunate and illicit connection
with her that I had lost all that made life dear to me.

At this moment (and not once since the morning I awoke from it) my
singular dream recurred to my mind. The thoughts which never had once
during my eventful voyage from the Bahamas to the Cape, and thence to
England, presented themselves in my waking hours, must certainly
have possessed my brain during sleep. Why else should it never have
occurred to my rational mind that the connection with Eugenia would
certainly endanger that intended with Emily? It was Eugenia that
placed Emily in mourning, out of my reach, and, as it were, on the top
of the Nine-Pin Rock.

Here, then, my dream was explained; and I now felt all the horrors of
that reality which I thought at the time was no more than the effect
of a disordered imagination. Yet I could not blame Eugenia; the poor
girl had fallen a victim to that deplorable and sensual education
which I had received in the cockpit of a man-of-war. I, I alone was
the culprit. She was friendless, and without a parent to guide her
youthful steps; she fell a victim to my ungoverned passions. Maddened
with anguish of head and heart, I threw myself violently on the grave:
I beat my miserable head against the tombstones; I called with frantic
exclamation on the name of Eugenia; and at length sank on the turf,
between the two graves, in a state of stupor and exhaustion, from
which a copious flood of tears in some measure relieved me.

I was aroused by the sound of wheels and the trampling of horses;
and, looking up, I percei