"All interest I can claim. His part that created it I could not give, not being mine to yield."
"Lost! lost! Thou hast, indeed, sold thyself to perdition! I'll purge this earth of witchery;—I'll make their carcases my weapon's sheath;—hence inglorious scabbard!" He flung away the sheath. Twining her dark hair about his fingers—"Die!—impious, polluted wretch! This blessed earth loathes thee,—the grave's holy sanctuary will cast thee out! Yon glorious sun would smite thee should I refrain!"
He raised his sword—a gleam of triumph seemed to flash from her eye, as though she were eager for the blow; but the descending weapon was stayed, and by no timid hand.
Lord William turned, yet he saw not the cause of its restraint. The lady alone seemed to be aware of some unseen intruder, and her eye darkened with apprehension. Suddenly she sprang from the couch; a shriek from no human agency escaped her, and the spirit seemed to have passed from its abode.
Lord William threw himself on her pale and inanimate form.
"Farewell!" he cried: "I had thought thee honest!—Nay, lost spirit, I must not say farewell!"
He gazed on his once-loved bride with a look of such unutterable tenderness that the heart's deep gush burst from his eyes, and he wept in that almost unendurable anguish. The sight was too harrowing to sustain. He was about to withdraw, when a convulsive tremor passed across her features—a trembling like the undulation of the breeze rippling the smooth bosom of
the lake; a sigh seemed to labour heavily from her breast; her eyes opened; but as though yet struggling under the influence of some terrific dream, she cried—
"Oh, save me—save me!" She looked upwards: it was as if the light of heaven had suddenly shone in upon her benighted soul.
"Lost, saidst thou, accursed fiend?—Never until his power shall yield to thine!"