“It was nearly three years after the period to which I have alluded that an accident of which I need not remind you, my beloved Helen, introduced me to the acquaintance of your family. You may remember the backwardness with which I first received their approaches; the very name of Percy had become ominously painful to me, and yet it inspired me with a strange and undefinable interest. A spell appeared to attract me towards you, and in spite of my first resolution to the contrary, in spite of the melancholy reserve that still dwelt upon my mind, I became an acquaintance, and at length the favoured inmate and friend, of your father. Could I imagine the dangers that lurked beneath his roof? could I believe that while I thus once more indulged in the social converse to which I had been long a stranger, I should gain the affections of his child? The playful girl towards whom my age enabled me to assume an almost parental authority, while I exercised, in turn, the parts of playmate and preceptor, beloved as she was in all the charms of her dawning beauty, and artless naiveté, inspired me with no deeper sentiment; not even when I saw her gradually expand into the maturer pride of womanhood, and acquire that feminine gentleness, that dignified simplicity of character, which had attracted me in Theresa Marchmont. Early in our intercourse, I had acquainted Lord Percy that the confinement of a beloved wife in a state of mental derangement, was the unhappy cause of my dejection and wandering habits of life; and I was rejoiced to perceive that his own seclusion from the world had prevented him from hearing my history related by others. He was also ignorant of the name and connexions of the lady to whom he knew his beloved and lamented son to have been attached; little indeed did he suspect his own share in producing my domestic calamity.
“The disparity of our years, and their knowledge of my own previous marriage, prevented them from regarding with suspicion the partiality displayed by their Helen for my society, and the influence which I had unconsciously acquired over her feelings. For a length of time I was myself equally blind, and the moment I ventured to fear the dangers of the attachment she was beginning to form. I took the resolution of tearing myself altogether from her society, and without the delay of an hour, I returned to Silsea.
“But what a scene did I select to reconcile me to the loss of the cheerful society I had abandoned! My deserted home seemed haunted by the shadows of the past, and tenanted only by remembrances of former affliction. In my hour of loneliness and sorrow, I had no kind friend to whom to turn for consolation; and for the first time the sterile and gloomy waste over which my future path of life was appointed, filled me with emotions of terror and regret. My very existence appeared blighted through the treachery of others; and all those holy ties which enrich the evening of our days with treasures far clearer than awaited us even into the morning 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 purpose; and indeed the difficulties which awaited me were even fewer than I had first anticipated. The ravings of Lady Greville, and her distracted addresses to the name of her lover had inspired her attendants with a believe of her guiltiness, which in the beginning of her illness I had vainly attempted to combat. It was not therefore to be expected that these faithful adherents of my family, who loved me with an almost parental devotion, and whose regret for the extinction of the name of Greville was the ruling passion of their breasts, should consider her an object worthy the sacrifice of my entire happiness. The few scruples they exhibited were those rather of expediency than of conscience were easily overcome. By their own desire they removed to Greville Cross for the more ready furtherance of our guilty plan; under pretence that the health of the unfortunate Theresa required change of air. On their arrival they found it easy to impress the servants of the establishment with a belief of her precarious state, and the nature of her malady afforded them a plausible pretext for secluding her from their observation and attendance. Accustomed to receive from Alice a daily account of her declining condition, the announcement of her death excited no surprise. In a few weeks after her journey, a fictitious funeral completed our system of deception.
“The moment when, according to our concerted plan, the death and interment of Lady Greville were formally announced to me, I repented of the detestable scheme which had been successfully executed. My soul revolted from the part of 'excellent dissembling' I had yet to act; and refused to sloop to a public exhibition of feigned affliction. I shuddered, too, when I contemplated the shame which awaited me, should some future event, yet hidden in the lap of time, reveal to the world the secret villainy of the man who had borne himself so proudly among his fellows. Yet even these regrets, even the apprehension of fresh difficulties in the concealment of my crime, were insufficient to deter me from the prosecution of my original intention; and blinded by the intemperance of misguided affection, heedless of the shame and misery into which I was about to plunge the woman I adored, I sought and obtained your hand.
“Helen, from that moment I have not known one happy hour, and the first punishment dealt upon my sin was an incapability to enjoy that affection for which I have forfeited all claim to mercy, here and hereafter. The remembrance of Theresa, not in her present state of self-abstraction, but captivating as when she first received my vows before God, to 'love and honour her, in sickness and in health,' haunted me through every scene of domestic endearment, and pursued me even to the hearth whose household deities I had blasphemed. I trembled when I heard my Helen addressed as Lady Greville, when I saw her usurping the rights, and occupying the place of one, who now appeared a nameless 'link between the living and the dead.' I could not gaze upon the woman whose affections had been so partially, so disinterestedly bestowed upon me, and whose existence I had in return polluted by a pretended marriage.—I could not behold of my boy, the descendant of two of the noblest houses in Britain, yet upon whom the stain of illegitimacy might hereafter rest, without feelings of self-accusation which filled the cup of life with the waters of bitterness. Alas! its very springs were poisoned—and Helen, however strong, however just thine indignation against thy betrayer, believe, oh! believe that even in this life I have endured no trifling measure of punishment for my deep offences against thee and thine!