So soon, therefore, as Lilias came within sight of Richard Sydney, who had arrived first at the place of rendezvous, she resolutely banished the thoughts that were so absorbing to her own glad heart, and set herself seriously to give her entire attention to the work now before her, if, haply, it might be given her, in some degree, to minister unto their grievous misery. And truly her first glance upon the face of the man who stood there, with his eyes fixed on the path which was to bring her and her hoped-for succor near to him, would have sufficed to have driven all ideas from her mind, save the one conviction, that in that look alone she had acquired a deeper knowledge of suffering than her own past life, in all its details, had ever afforded her. Sydney heard her step, long before she believed it possible, and, bounding toward her, he seized her hand with a grasp which was almost convulsive. He drew her aside to some little distance from her nurse, who sat down on a bank to wait for them.
Lilias bent down her head that she might not seem to note the workings of his countenance, as he laid bare before her the most hidden springs of his soul, and he began:
"I was born heir to a curse. Centuries ago an ancestor of mine murdered a woman he once had loved, because his neglect had driven her mad, and that in her ravings she revealed his many crimes. With her dying breath she invoked the curse of insanity on him and his house forever, and the cry of her departing soul was heard. There has not been a generation in our family since that hour which has not had its shrieking maniac to echo in our ears the murdered woman's scream. Some there have been among the Sydneys of peculiar constitution, as it would seem, who have not actually been visited with the malady; but they have never failed to transmit it to their children. Of such am I; while my father died a suicide by his own senseless act, and his only other child besides myself, my sister, wears her coronet of straw in the Dublin Asylum, and calls herself a queen.
"It would appall you to hear the fearful calamities which each succeeding family has undergone through this awful curse. At last, as the catalogue of tragic events grew darker and darker, it became a solemn matter of discussion to our unhappy race, whether it were not an absolute duty that the members of a house so doomed, should cease at last to propagate the curse, and by a resolute abandonment of all earthly ties, cause our name and misery to perish from the earth. The necessity for this righteous sacrifice was admitted; but the resolution in each separate individual to become the destined holocaust, has hitherto forever failed before the power of the mighty human love that lured them ever to its pure resistless joys. It was so with my father—like myself he was an only son; and, in the ardor of a generous youth, he vowed to be the offering needful to still the cry of that innocent blood for vengeance; but the sweet face of my mother came between him and his holy vow. He married her, and the punishment came down with fearful weight on both, when her fond heart broke at sight of his ghastly corpse. Then it was she knew the retribution in their case had been just; and on her dying bed, with the yet unclosed coffin of her husband by her side, she made me vow upon the holy cross that I, myself, would be the sacrifice—that never would I take a wife unto my heart or home; and that never, from my life, should any helpless being inherit existence with a curse. That vow I took, that vow I kept, and that vow I will keep, though Aletheia, beloved of my heart and soul, dearer than all beneath the skies, were to lay herself down beneath my very feet to die. Oh! shall we not rest in heaven."
He bowed his head for a moment, and his frame shook with emotion, but driving back the tide of anguish, he went on: "After my mother's death and my sister's removal, who had been insane almost from childhood, I shut myself up entirely at Sydney Court, and gave way to a species of morbid melancholy which was thought to be fearfully dangerous for one in my position. I had friends, however; and the best and truest was Colonel Randolph, my Aletheia's father, the early companion of my own poor, hapless parent. He was resolved to save me from the miserable condition in which I then was. He came to me and told me, with all the authority of his long friendship, that I must go with him to the M——, where he had been appointed governor. He said it was a crime to waste a life, which, though unblest by human ties, might be made most useful to my fellow-creatures. I had studied much in brighter days, and given to the world the fruits of my labors. These had not passed unheeded; he told me they had proved that talents had been committed to me whereby I might be a benefactor to my race, all the more that no soft endearments of domestic joys would wean my thoughts from sterner duties. I was to go with him; he insisted it would benefit myself, and would injure none. His family consisted of his one daughter, his precious, beloved Aletheia, for he doated on her with more than the ordinary love of a father. She knew my history, and would be to me a sister. Alas! alas! for her destruction, I consented."
Again, a momentary pause. Lilias gently raised her compassionate eyes, but he saw her not; he seemed lost in a vision of the past, and soon went on:
"That lovely land where I dwelt with her, it seems a type of the beauty and happiness which was around me then! And, oh! what a dream it is to think of now—the cloudless sky—the glorious sun—and her eyes undimmed, her smile unfaded! Oh! Aletheia—my Aletheia—treasure of many lives! bright and joyous—light to the eyes that looked on her, blessing to the hearts that loved her—would that I had died or ever I drew her very soul into mine, and left her the poor, crushed, helpless being that she is! You can not picture to yourself the fascination that was around her then—high-minded, noble in heart, lofty in soul; her bright spirit stamped its glory on her face, and she was beautiful, with all spiritual loveliness. None ever saw her who loved her not—her rare talents—her enchanting voice; that voice of her very soul, which spoke in such wonderful music, drew to her feet every creature who knew her; for with all these gifts, this wonderful intellect, and rarest powers of mind, she was playful, winning, simple as an innocent child. I say none saw her, and loved her not; how, think you, I loved her?—the doomed man, the desolate being, whose barren, joyless life walked hand in hand with a curse. Let this anguish tell you how I loved her;" and he turned on Lilias a face of ghastly paleness, convulsed with agony, and wet with the dews of suffering; but he did not pause, he went on rapidly: "I was mad, then, in one sense, though it was the madness of the heart, and not the brain. Poor wretch, I thought I would wring a joy out of my blasted life in spite of fate, and, while none other claimed her as their own, I would revel in her presence, and in the rapture of her tenderness. I knew it was mockery when I bid her call me brother—a sister truly is loved with other love than that I gave her. I would have seen every relation I had ever known laid dead at my feet, could I have thereby purchased for her, my thrice-beloved one, one moment's pleasure.
"Lilias, does a passion of such fearful power shock and terrify you, who have only known the placid beating of a gentle, childlike heart? Take a yet deeper lesson, then, in the dark elements of which this life may be composed, and learn that deep, and true, and mighty as was my love for her, it is as a mere name, a breath, a vapor, compared with that most awful affection which Aletheia had already, even then, vowed unto me, in the depth of her secret heart. Ah! it needed, in truth, such an agony as that which is now incorporate with it in her heart, to cope with its immensity; for, truly, no weak happiness of earth could have had affinity with it—a love so saint-like must needs have been a martyr. I will not attempt to tell you what her devotion to me was, and is, and shall be, while one faintest throb of life is stirring in her noble heart. You have seen it—you have seen that love looking through those eyes of hers, like a mighty spirit endowed with an existence separate from her own, which holds her soul in its fierce, powerful grasp.
"I must hurry on now, and my words must be rapid as the events that drove us from the serene elysian fields of that first dear companionship, through storm and whirlwind, to this wilderness of misery where I am sent to wander to and fro, like a murderer, as I am; condemned to watch the daily dying of the sweet life I have destroyed. You may think me blind and senseless, for so I surely was, but it is certain that I never suspected the love she bore me. I saw that she turned away from the crowds that flocked around, and was deaf to all the offers that were made to her, of rank, and wealth, and station, and many a true heart's love; but I thought this was because her own was yet untouched, and when I saw that I alone was singled out to be the object of her attention and solicitude, I fancied it was but the effect of her deep, generous pity for my desolate condition—and pity it was, but such as the mother feels for the suffering of the first-born, whom she adores. And the day of revelation came!
"I told you how Colonel Randolph doated on his daughter; truly, none ever loved Aletheia with a common love. When he was released from the duties of his high office, it was one of his greatest pleasures to walk, or ride with me, that he might talk to me of her. One morning he came in with a packet of letters from England, and, taking me by the arm, drew me out into the garden, that he might tell me some news, which, he said, gave him exceeding joy. The letters announced the arrival of the son of an old friend of his, who had just succeeded to his title and estates, the young Marquis of L——, and further communicated, in the most unreserved manner, that his object in coming to the M—— was to make Aletheia his wife, if he could win her to himself; he had long loved her, and had only delayed his offer till he could install her in his lordly castle with all the honors of his station. To see this union accomplished, Colonel Randolph said, had been his one wish since both had played as children at his feet, and he now believed the desired consummation was at hand. Aletheia's consent was alone required, and there seemed no reason to doubt it would be given, for there was not, he asserted, in all England, one more worthy of her, by every noble gift of mind, than the high-born, generous-hearted L——.