superstition, which were reinforced by the silence that prevailed, and
the gloomy glimmering of the light. She reflected upon the trespass she
had already committed in her heart, and, in the conjectures of her fear,
believed that her lover was no other than the devil himself, who had
assumed the appearance of Fathom, in order to tempt and seduce her
virtue.

While her imagination teemed with those horrible ideas, our adventurer,
concluding, from the general stillness, that the jeweller and his wife
were at last happily asleep, ventured to come forth from his
hiding-place, and stood before his mistress all begrimed with soot.
Wilhelmina, lifting up her eyes, and seeing this sable apparition, which
she mistook for Satan in propria persona, instantly screamed, and began
to repeat her pater-noster with an audible voice. Upon which Ferdinand,
foreseeing that her parents would be again alarmed, would not stay to
undeceive her and explain himself, but, unlocking the door with great
expedition, ran downstairs, and luckily accomplished his escape. This
was undoubtedly the wisest measure he could have taken; for he had not
performed one half of his descent toward the street, when the German was
at his daughter's bedside, demanding to know the cause of her
exclamation. She then gave him an account of what she had seen, with all
the exaggerations of her own fancy, and, after having weighed the
circumstances of her story, he interpreted the apparition into a thief,
who had found means to open the door that communicated with the stair;
but, having been scared by Wilhelmina's shriek, had been obliged to
retreat before he could execute his purpose.

Our hero's spirits were so wofully disturbed by this adventure, that, for
a whole week, he felt no inclination to visit his inamorata, and was not
without apprehension that the affair had terminated in an explanation
very little to his advantage. He was, however, delivered from this
disagreeable suspense, by an accidental meeting with the jeweller
himself, who kindly chid him for his long absence, and entertained him in
the street with an account of the alarm which his family had sustained,
by a thief who broke into Wilhelmina's apartment. Glad to find his
apprehension mistaken, he renewed his correspondence with the family,
and, in a little time, found reason to console himself for the jeopardy
and panic he had undergone.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

HE IS REDUCED TO A DREADFUL DILEM