e rugged being I
now appear. Of surpassing strength I had ever been, and fleet of foot,
but not then had I attained to my present gigantic stature; neither was
my form endowed with the same Herculean rudeness; nor did my complexion
wear the swarthy hue of the savage; nor had my features been rendered
repulsive, from the perpetual action of those fierce passions which
have since assailed my soul. My physical faculties had not yet been
developed to their present grossness of maturity, neither had my moral
energies acquired that tone of ferocity which often renders me hideous,
even in my own eyes. In a word, the milk of my nature (for, with all my
impetuosity of character, I was generous-hearted and kind) had not yet
been turned to gall by villainy and deceit. My form had then all that
might attract--my manners all that might win--my enthusiasm of speech
all that might persuade--and my heart all that might interest a girl
fashioned after nature's manner, and tutored in nature's school. In the
regiment, I was called the handsome grenadier; but there was another
handsomer than I,--a sly, insidious, wheedling, false, remorseless
villain. That villain, Clara de Haldimar, was your father.

"But wherefore," continued Wacousta, chafing with the recollection,
"wherefore do I, like a vain and puling schoolboy, enter into this
abasing contrast of personal advantages? The proud eagle soars not more
above the craven kite, than did my soul, in all that was manly and
generous, above that of yon false governor; and who should have prized
those qualities, if it were not the woman who, bred in solitude, and
taught by fancy to love all that was generous and noble in the heart of
man, should have considered mere beauty of feature as dust in the
scale, when opposed to sentiments which can invest even deformity with
loveliness? In all this I may appear vain; I am only just.

"I have said that your mother had been brought up in solitude, and
without having seen the face of another man than her father. Such was
the case;--Colonel Beverley, of English name, but Scottish connections,
was an old gentleman of considerable eccentricity of character. He had
taken a part in the rebellion of 1715; but sick and disgusted with an
issue by which his fortunes had been affected, and heart-broken by the
loss of a beloved wife, whose death had been accelerated by
circumstances connected with the disturbed nature of the times, he had
resolved to bury himself a