for my foreign tour, I determined
to take one last look at --- Hall before I left England. I set off
unknown to my family, and contrived to be near the boundaries of the
park by dusk. I desired the post-boy to stop half a mile from the
house, and to wait my return. I cleared the paling; and, avoiding the
direct road, came up to the 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 a 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 moonlight, she
perceived me lying on the ground. Her first idea was, that I had
committe