n to you.

"I felt that all my libertine pursuits had only been the shadows of
pleasure; and from that moment I determined to abandon them, and fix my
love on her alone. We became acquainted, and I found that she was as
worthy of the purest love as my fond wishes desired. She was the only
child of Count Rudolpho; and, for the space of three months, I was a
constant visiter at her father's palazzo. In due time I pleaded the
force of my love. But what were the sensations of my soul, when the tear
started from her eye of beauty, and the dreadful sentence burst upon my
ear--'I am the bride of Theodore!'

"I burst from her presence with a palpitating heart, and returned
homewards, agitated by the conflicting passions of despair and revenge.
I drew my sword from its sheath, and promised the blood of Theodore, of
the friend of my bosom, to its point. The steel trembled in my grasp as
the vow fell from my lips, and my heart recoiled at the idea of shedding
blood; but the still small voice was an unequal match with the baneful
principles of a corrupted soul."

The recluse stopped, and the loud sobs of sorrow and repentance alone
burst upon the gloomy silence of the scene. The hectic flush of fever
played and wantoned across his pallid features, as if it seemed to exult
in the weakness of mortality, and delight in the loveliness of its own
soul-loathed ravages. The tears dropped large and plentiful from his
eyes, and his spirit seemed bended and broken with the racking
remembrance. I bent over the wasted form of the wretched penitent, and
while I poured the voice of comfort in his ear, and wiped the tears from
his eyes, his soul resumed its wonted firmness, and even a smile beamed
upon his blanched lips, as he grasped my hand, and pressed it to his
bosom in silence, and with thankfulness.

"Behold!" said he, drawing an old sword from beneath the side of his
miserable straw pallet--"behold this steel, red-rusted with the blood of
Theodore, from which the bitter tears of sixty long winters have been
unable to efface the stain. Pardon the feelings of an infirm old man. My
soul weeps blood at the remembrance.

"I pitched upon the bridal eve of Theodore for that of his death, and
the seizure of his bride; and hired the leader of a band of ruffians to
assist me in the scheme. The fatal night, so big with horror, at last
arrived. The sun sank sullenly into the shades of the west, and his
departing gleams glanced redly and angrily u