that convulsed him.

"Fiend!" I cried; "inexplicable devil! what would you have, then? What
is your aim in thus coming with your curses between us?"

"You shall never know," he replied, "unless to deplore it to the last
hour of your life. You can never know unless you outrage my will. I have
the power to make you wretched forever, to blight and destroy you. And
if you treat my warning with contempt, I will do it without fail,
without mercy, without remorse. The jester who has contributed so
largely to your entertainment, and furnished such a delectable theme for
your secret and cowardly mockery, will shoot a bolt of a graver cast
when you least expect it, and think yourself most secure. Mark me--note
me well. These are not words of rage, or transient passion: remember
them, be wise, and look to your safety. See Astraea no more. With this I
leave you. Our next meeting must be of your making."

I was alone. Overwhelmed and awed by the demoniacal maledictions of the
wretched creature whom I had hitherto so intensely despised, I knew not
what to think, or how to act. He had assumed a fresh shape, more
marvelous than any he had hitherto put on in the whole round of his
extraordinary mummery. The raillery and tipsy recklessness which
appeared constitutional in him had suddenly passed away, leaving not a
solitary trace behind. Even his figure, while he had been speaking,
seemed to heave with a new life, and to dilate into unnatural
dimensions. I was perplexed to the last extremity; not that the malice
of the demon could scare me from my resolves, but that his motives were
so impenetrable as to suffer no clew to escape by which I could discover
the evil purpose that lay at the bottom.

It was not the machination or revenge of a disappointed suitor. He never
could have aspired to a hope of Astraea, and he avowed his aversion to
her. She was ignorant of all this bravado about her; and would be even
more indignant to hear of it than I was to suffer it. I resolved,
therefore, not to insult her by revealing it to her. Fortunately, I had
made an appointment to meet her alone on the following day. That meeting
would decide every thing. She might, perhaps, throw some light upon what
was at present a profound mystery to me. At all events, my course was
clear. Under the circumstances in which I was placed, I felt that there
lay but one alternative before me.

VII.

My resolution was taken, as I thought, very composedly. I tried t