Reginald Tracy awoke early on the morning when Cecilia was to return to him.
He had been dreaming of delicious scenes and voluptuous pleasures; and he opened his eyes to the fearful realities of Newgate.
He clasped his hands together with the convulsiveness of ineffable mental agony; and the smile that had played upon his lips in his elysian dream, was suddenly changed into the contortion of an anguish that could know no earthly mitigation.
"Fool—madman that I have been!" he exclaimed aloud, in a piercing tone of despair. "From what a brilliant position have I fallen! Wealth—pleasure—fame—love—life, all about to pass away! The entire fabric destroyed by my own hands! Oh! wretch—senseless idiot—miserable fool that I have been! But is it really true?—can it be as it seems to me? Have I done the deed? Am I here—here, in Newgate? Or is it all a dream? Perhaps I have gone suddenly mad, and my crime and its consequences are only the inventions of my disordered imagination? Yes—it may be so; and this is a mad-house!"
Then the rector sate up in his bed, and glanced wildly around the cell.
"No—no!" he cried with a shriek of despair; "I cannot delude myself thus. I am indeed a murderer—and this is Newgate!"
He threw himself back on the rude bolster, and covered his face with his hands.
But though he closed his eyes, and pressed his fingers upon the lids until the balls throbbed beneath, he could not shut out from his mind the horrors of his position.
"Oh! this is insupportable!" he cried, and then rolled upon his bed in convulsions of rage: he gnashed his teeth—he beat his brow—he tore his hair—he clenched his fists with the fury of a demon.
His emotions were terrible.