of the
sun, in all its glorious brightness, should not reach me. The
sounds, the smells, that I was enjoying a few minutes before,
were growing intolerable to me. No voice could then have been
welcome to me (for the voice I loved best, the voice that had
ever spoken peace and joy to my heart, I had just heard utter
words that had destroyed at one blow the fabric of bliss which
my heart had so long reared for itself); no voice, I say,
could have been welcome to me; but when I heard the sharp and
querulous tones of Julia, God in mercy forgive me for what I
felt. She was again standing at the head of the stone steps,
that I have described as forming one of the extremities of the
verandah; and as she placed her foot on one of the moss-covered
slippery steps, she called out, "I'm going down--I'll
have my own way now." I seized her hand, and drawing her back,
exclaimed, "Don't, Julia!" on which she said, "You bad better
not teaze me; you are to be sent away if you teaze me." I felt
as if a viper had stung me; the blood rushed to my head, and I
struck her;--she reeled under the blow, her foot slipped, and
she fell headlong down the stone steps. A voice near me said,
"She has killed her!" There was a plunge in the water below;
her white frock rose to the surface--sunk--rose again--and
sunk to rise no more. Two men rushed wildly down the bank, and
one of them turned and looked up as he passed. I heard a
piercing scream--a mother's cry of despair. Nobody said again
"She has killed her." I did not die--I did not go mad, for I
had not an instant's delusion--I never doubted the reality of
what had happened; but those words--"She has killed her!" "She
has killed her!"--were written as with a fiery pencil on my
brain, and day and night they rang in my ears. Who had spoken
them?

There was the secret of my fate!

CHAPTER II.

"Whence is that knocking?
How is 't with me when every noise appals me;
What hands are here? Ha! they pluck out mine eyes.
Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand?"

SHAKESPEARE.

"In the wind there is a voice
Shall forbid thee to rejoice;
And to thee shall night deny
All the quiet of her sky;
And the day shall have a sun
Which shall make thee wish it done."

BYRON.

I know not how long I remained in the same place, rooted to
the spot, the blood rushing at one instant with such violence
to my head, that it seemed as if it wou