"'I see you are in torments,' he said, 'and fitly so; but if you have this much of grace left, now at least to suffer, it may be that every spark of justice is not dead within you, and that you will save her yet.'
"'Save her!' I almost shrieked. 'Yes, if by any means upon this earth such a blessing be possible! Shall I die? I am ready—oh, how ready.'
"'No; to die were but to carry her into your grave,' the cruel voice replied; 'but living, I believe that you may save her. From what I know of that most noble child's pure soul, I do believe that you may save her yet. Man! who have been her curse and mine, will you swear to do so, by any means I may command?'
"'I will swear!' was my answer, and his glazing eyes were suddenly lit up with a fierce delight. 'And how?' I cried.
"'Thus,' he answered, drawing me close to him, and putting his lips to my ear: 'by rendering yourself hateful to her! To quit her were to bid her lament you unto the death; but by her very side to render yourself abhorrent to her, thus shall you save her! You have sworn—remember, you have sworn! Go! When I am dead, give up that voice and look of love; put on a stern aspect; treat her as a cruel taskmaster treats a slave; be harsh; be merciless; tell her the love she bears you, by its depth of passion, hath become a crime, and you have vowed to crush it out of her; but say not I commanded it; let her believe it is your own free will; punish her for that love; let her think you hate her for it; trample her soul beneath your haughty feet; let her hear naught but bitterest words—see naught but sternest looks—feel naught but a grasp severe and torturing—to tear her clinging arms from around you!—so shall you save her; for she will suffer but a little while at first, and then will leave you to be forever blest;—so shall you crush her love, and send her out from your heart to seek a better. Sydney, you have sworn to do it—you have sworn!'
"He repeated the words with fearful vehemence, for life was ebbing with the blood that flowed. Gathering up his last energies, he shrieked into my ear—'Say that you have sworn!—answer, or my spirit curses you forever!' and I answered: 'I have sworn!'
"He burst into a laugh of awful triumph, sunk back, and expired....
"Lilias, I have kept that vow!"
At these words, uttered in a hoarse and ominous tone, which seemed to convey a volume of fearful meaning, a cold shiver crept over the frame of the young Lilias: a horror unspeakable took possession of her, as the vail seemed suddenly lifted up from the mysterious agony which had made Aletheia's life, even to the outward eye, a mere embodiment of perpetual suffering; and her deep and womanly appreciation of what her unhappy cousin had endured, caused her to shrink almost in fear from the wretched man by her side, who had thus been constrained to become the cruel tyrant of her he loved so fondly. But he spoke again in such broken, faltering accents, that her heart once more swelled with pity for him.
"Yes, Lilias, I kept that fearful vow: the grasp of the dead man's hand, which, even as he stiffened into a mass of senseless clay, still locked my own as with an iron gripe, seemed to have bound it on my soul, and I, alas! believed in the efficacy of this means for her restoration from the destructive madness of her love to such an one as I. I believed I thus should save her, and turn her pure affection to a salutary hate. Yes; with energy, with fierce determination, I did keep that vow, because it was to bind myself unto such untold tortures, that it seemed a righteous expiation; and what, oh, what has been the result! Her father thought he knew her. He thought the intensity of her tenderness would brave insanity or death; but, not my hatred and contempt! and he knew her not, in her unparalleled generosity! for behold her glorious devotion hath trampled even my contumely under foot, and hath risen faithful, changeless, all perfect as before.