e
reflected upon the depth of her love, and yet she would not have torn it
from her heart for worlds; for there was a satisfaction and a sense of
bliss always blending, confusedly and unintelligibly, it is true, with
the horror that darkened through her soul. In his presence, she felt ill
at ease, and yet there was a vacuum created by his absence which nothing
but his presence could fill. He had spoken to her of love, of its beauty
and holiness, of its depth and power, but no vows had yet been
interchanged; and although she would have preferred death to the
certainty that he never would declare his love to her, yet she dreaded
the declaration, and could not think with calmness on the moment when it
was to be made. There was something in the earnest flashing of his eyes
when he gazed upon her that startled and almost terrified her; and yet
there was a charm in those looks that thrilled her inmost soul with
pleasure, and she could have wished he might gaze thus for ever. His
words, too, fell with a strange emphasis and a peculiar force upon her
ears; but there was a music in them that sank into her heart and
awakened a sense of joy that nothing else could stir.

The hand of destiny seemed to be guiding her to some awful fate, of
which presentiment made her fully conscious; but the path to which was
strewn with so many charms she willingly, ay anxiously, trod it, and
would not have turned back if she could.

CHAPTER II.

DANIEL KELFORD had fitted him up a little study room, in which he spent
most of his time. Books were his idols, and he worshiped them with more
than a pagan zeal. His table was strewn with antique and curious
volumes, many of them abounding in the wild and marvelous, and in these
his whole soul seemed absorbed. The love-sick and sentimental had no
charm for him; but he sought rather the abstruse and mysterious, bending
all his energies to the comprehension of the one and the unraveling of
the other. Vague dreams, as it were, flitted through his mind, highly
colored by his diseased fancy, and all wearing a supernatural hue.
Metaphysics was his darling study. He maintained that, as every particle
of matter is dependent on those surrounding it, and as all are bound and
held together by attraction, making one whole, and as it is impossible
to conceive of one single particle existing independently and
unconnected with any other, so every idea is linked with others forming
one mind, and a single isolated id