'Whose victim are you?' said I.
'Whose?' repeated he loudly and wildly. 'Did you say whose, Miss Valmont?' Then turning away and sinking his voice, he said, 'Ay whose, indeed! Do you know,' added he, approaching nearer to me, 'that death is of icy coldness! The eye beams no tidings, for the heart feels no warmth! Such is my love to me!—Tell me, Miss Valmont, what would you do were Clement thus?'
'Alas! Die also!'
'Oh brave!' said Murden with a strange kind of smile:—'bear witness, thou unhallowed gloomy mansion, for one, one moment of our lives are we agreed!—Miss Valmont, I shall never see you more. If I have created uneasiness in your breast, by my strange visits to this spot, forgive and forget it. Ask me no questions. In some hour of less anguish than the present, I will tell Miss Ashburn how and why I came hither. Another person there is also to whom I shall owe the detail.—Hold'—for I was going to speak. 'Do not name him. Your last words were, Die also! To me your last, choicest blessing. No! No! I will not hear you speak again. This is our final interview.—In peace and safety, Miss Valmont, return to your wood; and when remembrances of love shall be no longer remembrances of happiness, then—Die also.
And who, Caroline, could outlive their remembrances of happiness? I have placed myself one minute in the situation of this unfortunate young man: I beheld the tomb close upon the lifeless form of Clement, and in the wide world there was no longer room for me.
Murden descended to his cell; and I went home to weep for him. Will not you weep for him, my friend? and Clement too? I feel you will. Clement knows full well the value of requited affection; he will sooth his friend, but he will not ask him to live. It would be cruelty.
Nina looked kindly at me, but she followed Murden; and, since he quitted that ill-chosen abode, I often see her descending the rock. She even appears to mourn his absence; and she looks around expectingly, and starts at every gust of wind, as she used when Clement first bade us adieu.
Either to you or Clement I appeal for the further history of your drooping friend. Bid Clement write: be it only three words, 'Bless my Sibella;' and I will wear it next my heart—a charm to hold disease and foreboding at defiance.
My dearest friend, farewel!
SIBELLA VALMONT