"Why, indeed, should she not, at once, accept the brilliant destiny carved out for her!—I did not doubt it more than the exulting father, and I heard my doom fixed in the same senseless state of calm with which the criminal who knows his guilt and its penalty, hears the sentence of his execution. I had long known this hour must come; and what had I now to do but gather, as it were, a shroud round my tortured soul, and, like the Cæsars, die decently to all earthly happiness! Even in that tremendous hour, I had a consciousness of the dignity of suffering—suffering, that is, which comes from the height of heaven above, and not from the depths of crime below! I resolved that the lamp of my life's joy should go out without a sigh audible to human ears, save hers alone, who had lit that pure flame in the black night of my existence.
"Lilias, I enter into no detail of what I felt in that momentous crisis, for you have no woman's heart if you have not understood it, in its uttermost extent of misery. One thought, however, stood up pre-eminent in that chaos of suffering—the conviction that I must not see Aletheia Randolph again, or the very powers of my mind would give way in the struggle that must ensue. This thought, and one other—one solitary gleam of dreary comfort, that alone relieved the great darkness which had fallen upon me, were all that seemed distinct in my mind: that last mournful consolation was the resolution taken along with the vow to see her no more, that ere I passed forever from her memory, she should know what was the love with which I loved her.
"Quietly I gave her father my hand when I quitted him, and he said, 'We shall meet in the evening;' my own determination was never to look upon his face again. I went home, and sitting down, I wrote to Aletheia a letter, in which all the pent-up feelings of the deep, silent devotion I cherished for her, were poured out in words to which the wretchedness of my position gave a fearful intensity—burning words, indeed! She has told me since, that they seemed to eat into her heart like fire. I left the letter for her and quitted the house; and I believed my feet should never pass that beloved threshold again. There was a spot where Aletheia and I had gone almost day by day to wander, since we had dwelt in that land. She loved it, because she could look out over the ocean in its boundlessness, whose aspect soothed her, she said, as with a promise of eternity. It was a huge rock that rose perpendicularly from the sea, and sloped down on the other side, by a gentle declivity, to the plain. I have often thought what a type of our life it was; we saw nothing of the precipice as we ascended the soft and verdant mount, and suddenly it was at our feet, and if the blast of heaven had driven us another step, it had been into destruction.
"Thither, when I had parted, as I believed, forever, with that darling of my heart, I went with what intent I know not: it was not to commit suicide; although in that form, in the mad longing for it, the curse of my family has ever declared itself. I was yet sane, and my soul acknowledged and abhorred the tremendous guilt of that mysterious crime, wherein the created dashes back the life once given, in the very face of the Creator; not for suicide I went, yet, Lilias, as I stood within an inch of death, and looked down on the placid waters that had so swiftly cooled the burning anguish of my heart and brain, I felt, in the intense desire to terminate my life, and in that desire resisted, a more stinging pain than any which my bitter term of years has ever offered me. Oh, how shall I tell you what followed? I feel as though I could not: and briefly, and, indeed, incoherently, must I speak; for on the next hour—the supreme, the crowning hour of all my life—my spirit enters not, without an intensity of feeling which well-nigh paralyzes every faculty.
"I stood there, and suddenly I heard a sound—a soft, breathing sound, as of a gentle fawn wearied in some steep ascent—a sound coming nearer and nearer, bringing with it ten thousand memories of hours and days that were to come no more: a step, light and tremulous, falling on the soft grass softly, and then a voice.—Oh, when mine ears are locked in death, shall I not hear it?—a voice uttering low and sweet, my well-known name. I turned, and when I saw that face, on whose sweet beauty other eyes should feed, yea, other lips caress, for one instant the curse of my forefather seemed upon me; my brain reeled, and I would have sprung from the precipice to die. But ere I could accomplish the sudden craving of this momentary frenzy, Aletheia, my own Aletheia, was at my feet, her clinging arms were round me, her lips were pressed upon my hands, and her voice—her sweet, dear voice—went sounding through my soul like a sudden prophecy of most unearthly joy, murmuring, 'Live, live for me, mine own forever!'
"Oh, Lilias, how can I attempt with human words to tell you of these things, so far beyond the power of language to express! I felt that what she said was true—that in some way, by some wonderful means, she was in very deed and truth, 'mine own, forever,' though, in that moment of supremest joy, no less firmly than in the hour of supremest sorrow by my mother's dying bed, my heart and soul were faithful to the vow then taken, that never on my desolate breast a wife should lay her head to rest. 'Mine own forever!'—as I looked down, and met the gaze of fathomless, unutterable love with which her tearful eyes were fastened full upon my own, I was as one who having long dwelt in darkest night, was blinded with the sudden glare of new returning day. I staggered back, and leant against the rock; faint and shivering I stretched out my hands on that beloved head, longing for the power to bless her, and said, 'Oh, Aletheia, what is it you have said: have you forgotten who and what I am!'
"'No!' was her answer, steady and distinct; 'and for that very reason, because you are a stricken man, forever cut off from all the common ties of earth, have I been given to you, to be in heart and soul peculiarly your own, with such a measure of entire devotion as never was offered to man on earth before.'
"I looked at her almost in bewilderment. She rose up to her full height, perfectly calm, and with a deep solemnity in her words and aspect.
"'Richard,' she said, 'the lives of both of us are hanging on this hour; by it shall all future existence on this earth be shaped for us, and its memory shall come with death itself to look us in the face, and stamp our whole probation with its seal; it becomes us, therefore, to cast aside all frivolous rules of man's convention, and speak the truth as deathless soul with deathless soul. Hear me, then, while I open up my inmost spirit to your gaze, and then decide whether you will lay your hand upon my life, and say—'Thou art my own;' or whether you will fling it from you to perish as some worthless thing?'
"I bowed my head in token that she should continue, for I could not speak. I, Lilias, who had looked death and insanity in the face, under their most frightful shapes, trembled, like a reed in the blast, before the presence of a love that was mightier than either! Aletheia stretched out her hand over the precipice, and spoke—