Those ravishing accents,
with which thou hast used to greet me, will be changed. Scowling and
reproaches, the invectives of thy anger and the maledictions of thy
justice, will rest upon my head,

"What is the blessing which I made the theme of my boastful arrogance? This interval of being and repose is momentary. She will awake, but only
to perish at the spectacle of my ingratitude. She will awake only to the
consciousness of instantly-impending death. When she again sleeps she
will wake no more. I, her son,--I, whom the law of my birth doomed to
poverty and hardship, but whom her unsolicited beneficence snatched from
those evils, and endowed with the highest good known to intelligent
beings, the consolations of science and the blandishments of
affluence,--to whom the darling of her life, the offspring in whom are
faithfully preserved the lineaments of its angelic mother, she has not
denied! What is the recompense that I have made? How have I discharged
the measureless debt of gratitude to which she is entitled? Thus!--

"Cannot my guilt be extenuated? Is there not a good that I can do thee? Must I perpetrate unmingled evil? Is the province assigned me that of an
infernal emissary, whose efforts are concentred in a single purpose, and
that purpose a malignant one? I am the author of thy calamities. Whatever misery is reserved for thee, I am the source whence it flows. Can I not set bounds to the stream? Cannot I prevent thee from returning
to a consciousness which, till it ceases to exist, will not cease to be
rent and mangled? "Yes. It is in my power to screen thee from the coming storm; to
accelerate thy journey to rest. I will do it." The impulse was not to be resisted. I moved with the suddenness of
lightning. Armed with a pointed implement that lay----it was a dagger. As I set down the lamp, I struck the edge. Yet I saw it not, or noticed
it not till I needed its assistance. By what accident it came hither, to
what deed of darkness it had already been subservient, I had no power to
inquire. I stepped to the table and seized it. The time which this action required was insufficient to save me. My doom
was ratified by powers which no human energies can counterwork.--Need I
go further? Did you entertain any imagination of so frightful a
catastrophe? I am overwhelmed by turns with dismay and with wonder. I am
prompted by turns to tear my heart from my breast and deny faith to the
verdict of my senses. Was it I that hurried to the deed? No. It was the demon that possessed
me. My limbs were guided to the bloody office by a power foreign and
superior to mine. I had been defrauded, for a moment, of the empire of
my muscles. A little moment for that sufficed. If my destruction had
not been decreed, why was the image of Clarice so long excluded? Yet why
do I say long? The fatal resolution was conceived, and I hastened to the
execution, in a period too brief for more than itself to be viewed by
the intellect. What then? Were my hands imbrued in this precious blood? Was it to this
extremity of horror that my evil genius was determined to urge me? Too
surely this was his purpose; too surely I was qualified to be its
minister. I lifted the weapon. Its point was aimed at the bosom of the sleeper. The impulse was given. At the instant a piercing shriek was uttered behind me, and a
stretched-out hand, grasping the blade, made it swerve widely from its
aim. It descended, but without inflicting a wound. Its force was spent
upon the bed. Oh for words to paint that stormy transition! I loosed my hold of the
dagger. I started back, and fixed eyes of frantic curiosity on the
author of my rescue. He that interposed to arrest my deed, that started
into being and activity at a moment so pregnant with fate, without
tokens of his purpose or his coming being previously imparted, could
not, methought, be less than divinity. The first glance that I darted on this being corroborated my conjecture. It was the figure and lineaments of Mrs. Lorimer. Negligently habited in
flowing and brilliant white, with features bursting with terror and
wonder, the likeness of that being who was stretched upon the bed now
stood before me. All that I am able to conceive of angel was comprised in the moral
constitution of this woman. That her genius had overleaped all bounds,
and interposed to save her, was no audacious imagination. In the state
in which my mind then was, no other belief than this could occupy the
first place. My tongue was tied. I gazed by turns upon her who stood before me, and
her who lay upon the bed, and who, awakened by the shriek that had been
uttered, now opened her eyes. She started from her pillow, and, by
assuming a new and more distinct attitude, permitted me to recognise
_Clarice herself_! Three days before, I had left her, beside the bed of a dying friend, at
a solitary mansion in the mountains of Donegal. Here it had been her
resolution to remain till her friend should breathe her last. Fraught
with this persuasion, knowing this to be the place and hour of repose of
my lady, hurried forward by the impetuosity of my own conceptions,
deceived by the faint gleam which penetrated through the curtain and
imperfectly-irradiated features which bore, at all times, a powerful
resemblance to those of Mrs. Lorimer, I had rushed to the brink of this
terrible precipice! Why did I linger on the verge? Why, thus perilously situated, did I not
throw myself headlong? The steel was yet in my hand. A single blow would
have pierced my heart, and shut out from my remembrance and foresight
the past and the future. The moment of insanity had gone by, and I was once more myself. Instead
of regarding the act which I had meditated as the dictate of compassion
or of justice, it only added to the sum of my ingratitude, and gave
wings to the whirlwind that was sent to bear me to perdition. Perhaps I was influenced by a sentiment which I had not leisure to
distribute into parts. My understanding was, no doubt, bewildered in the
maze of consequences which would spring from my act. How should I
explain my coming hither in this murderous guise, my arm lifted to
destroy the idol of my soul and the darling child of my patroness? In
what words should I unfold the tale of Wiatte, and enumerate the motives
that terminated in the present scene? What penalty had not my
infatuation and cruelty deserved? What could I less than turn the
dagger's point against my own bosom? A second time, the blow was thwarted and diverted. Once more this
beneficent interposer held my arm from the perpetration of a new
iniquity. Once more frustrated the instigations of that demon, of whose
malice a mysterious destiny had consigned me to be the sport and the
prey. Every new moment added to the sum of my inexpiable guilt. Murder was
succeeded, in an instant, by the more detestable enormity of suicide.