ning of youth, appeared withheld from me, and me only.
Helen, it was then, in that moment of disappointment and bitterness,
that the remembrance of thy loveliness, and the suspicion of thine
affection conspired to from that fatal passion which has been the bane
of thy happiness, and the origin of my guilt.

"Avoiding as I scrupulously did the range of apartments inhabited by the
unfortunate Lady Greville, several years had passed since I had beheld
her; and sometimes when I had been bewildered in the reveries of my own
desolate heart, began to doubt her very existence. Yet this unseen
being who appeared to occupy no place in the scale of human nature, this
unconscious creature who now dwelt in my remembrance like the unreal
mockery of a dream, presented an insuperable obstacle to my happiness. I
saw my inheritance destined to be wrenched from me

"'By an unlineal hand
No son of mine succeedingly,'

"and I felt myself doomed to resign every enjoyment and every hope for
the sake of one to whom the sacrifice availed nothing; one, too, who had
permitted me to fold her to my heart in the full confidence of undivided
affection, while her own was occupied by a passion whose violence had
deprived me of my child, and herself of intellect and health.

"Such were the arguments by which I strove to blind myself to my rising
passion for another, and to smother the self-reproaches which assailed
me when I first conceived the fatal project of imposing upon the world
by the supposed death of my wife, and of seeking your hand in marriage.
How often did the better feelings of my nature recoil from such an act
of villainy--how often was my project abandoned, how often resumed at
the alternate bidding of passion and of virtue! I will not repeat the
idle sophistry which served to complete my wilful blindness; nor dare
I degrade myself in your eyes by a confession of the tissue of
contemptible fraud and hypocrisy into which I was necessarily betrayed
by the execution of my dark designs. Oh! Helen--this heart of mine was
once honest, once good and true as thine own; but now there crawls not
on this earth a wretch whose lying lips have uttered falsehoods more
villainous than mine! and honour, the characteristic of the ancient
house I have disgraced, the best attribute of the high calling I have
polluted, is now a watchword of dismay to my ear.

"In Alice Wishart and her husband I found ready instruments for the
completion of my purpo