ich Woodward had
brought, with so much apparent reluctance, against him--the charge of
having neglected and abandoned her for another, and that other a person
of low birth, who, by relinquishing her virtue, had contrived to gain
such an artful and selfish ascendancy over him. How could she doubt
it? Here was a woman ignorant of the communication Woodward had made to
her,--ignorant of the vows that had passed between them,--who had heard
of his falsehood and profligacy, and who never would have alluded to
them had she not been questioned. So far, then, Woodward, she felt,
stood without blame with respect to his brother. And how could she
suspect Caterine to have been the agent of that gentleman, when she knew
now that her object in seeking an interview with herself was to put her
on her guard against him? The case was clear, and, to her, dreadful
as it was clear. She felt herself now, however, in that mood which no
sympathy can alleviate or remove. She experienced no wish to communicate
her distress to any one, but resolved to preserve the secret in her
own bosom. Here, then, was she left to suffer the weight of a twofold
affliction--the dread of Woodward, with which Caterine's intelligence
had filled her heart, feeble, and timid, and credulous as it was upon
any subject of a superstitious tendency--and the still deeper distress
which weighed her down in consequence of Charles Lindsay's treachery and
dishonor. Alas! poor Alice's heart was not one for struggles,
nurtured and bred up, as she had been, in the very wildest spirit of
superstition, in all its degrading ramifications. There was something
in the imagination and constitution of the poor girl which generated and
cherished the superstitions which prevailed in her day. She could not
throw them off her mind, but dwelt upon them with a kind of fearful
pleasure which we can understand from those which operated upon our
own fancies in our youth. These prepare the mind for the reception of a
thousand fictions concerning ghosts, witches, fairies, apparitions, and
a long catalogue of nonsense, equally disgusting and repugnant to reason
and common-sense. It is not surprising, then, that poor Alice's mind on
that night was filled with phantasms of the most feverish and excited
description. As far as she could, however, she concealed her agitation
from her parents, but not so successfully as to prevent them from
perceiving that she was laboring under some extraordinary and
una