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<h2>CHAPTER XXVI.</h2> There is a word in the vocabulary more bitter, more direful in its import, than all the rest.  Reader, if poverty, if disgrace, if bodily pain, even if slighted love be your unhappy fate, kneel and bless Heaven for its beneficent influence, so that you are not tortured with the anguish of—remorse. Deep contrition for past offences had long been the punishment of unhappy Agnes; but, till the day she brought her child into the world, remorse had been averted.  From that day, life became an insupportable load, for all reflection was torture!  To think, merely to think, was to suffer excruciating agony; yet, never before was thought so intrusive—it haunted her in every spot, in all discourse or company: sleep was no shelter—she never slept but her racking dreams told her—“she had slain her infant.” They presented to her view the naked innocent whom she had longed to press to her bosom, while she lifted up her hand against its life.  They laid before her the piteous babe whom her eyeballs strained to behold once more, while her feet hurried her away for ever. Often had Agnes, by the winter’s fire, listened to tales of ghosts—of the unceasing sting of a guilty conscience; often had she shuddered at the recital of murders; often had she wept over the story of the innocent put to death, and stood aghast that the human mind could premeditate the heinous crime of assassination. From the tenderest passion the most savage impulse may arise: in the deep recesses of fondness, sometimes is implanted the root of cruelty; and from loving William with unbounded lawless affection, she found herself depraved so as to become the very object which could most of all excite her own horror! Still, at delirious intervals, that passion, which, like a fatal talisman, had enchanted her whole soul, held out the delusive prospect that “William might yet relent;” for, though she had for ever discarded the hope of peace, she could not force herself to think but that, again blest with his society, she should, at least for the time that he was present with her, taste the sweet cup of “forgetfulness of the past,” for which she so ardently thirsted. “Should he return to me,” she thought in those paroxysms of delusion, “I would to him unbosom all my guilt; and as a remote, a kind of unwary accomplice in my crime, his sense, his arguments, ever ready in making light of my sins, might afford a respite to my troubled conscience.” While thus she unwittingly thought, and sometimes watched through the night, starting with convulsed rapture at every sound, because it might possibly be the harbinger of him, he was busied in carefully looking over marriage articles, fixing the place of residence with his destined bride, or making love to her in formal process.  Yet, Agnes, vaunt!—he sometimes thought on thee—he could not witness the folly, the weakness, the vanity, the selfishness of his future wife, without frequently comparing her with thee.  When equivocal words and prevaricating sentences fell from her lips, he remembered with a sigh thy candour—that open sincerity which dwelt upon thy tongue, and seemed to vie with thy undisguised features, to charm the listener even beyond the spectator.  While Miss Sedgeley eagerly grasped at all the gifts he offered, he could not but call to mind “that Agnes’s declining hand was always closed, and her looks forbidding, every time he proffered such disrespectful tokens of his love.”  He recollected the softness which beamed from her eyes, the blush on her face at his approach, while he could never discern one glance of tenderness from the niece of Lord Bendham: and the artificial bloom on her cheeks was nearly as disgusting as the ill-conducted artifice with which she attempted gentleness and love. But all these impediments were only observed as trials of his fortitude—his prudence could overcome his aversion, and thus he valued himself upon his manly firmness. ’Twas now, that William being rid, by the peevishness of Agnes, most honourably of all future ties to her, and the day of his marriage with Miss Sedgeley being fixed, that Henry, with the rest of the house, learnt what to them was news.  The first dart of Henry’s eye upon his cousin, when, in his presence, he was told of the intended union, caused a reddening on the face of the latter: he always fancied Henry saw his thoughts; and he knew that Henry in return would give him his.  On the present occasion, no sooner were they alone, and Henry began to utter them, than William charged him—“Not to dare to proceed; for that, too long accustomed to trifle, the time was come when serious matters could alone employ his time; and when men of approved sense must take place of friends and confidants like him.” Henry replied, “The love, the sincerity of friends, I thought, were their best qualities: these I possess.” “But you do not possess knowledge.” “If that be knowledge which has of late estranged you from all who bear you a sincere affection; which imprints every day more and more upon your features the marks of gloomy inquietude; am I not happier in my ignorance?” “Do not torment me with your ineffectual reasoning.” “I called at the cottage of poor Agnes the other day,” returned Henry: “her father and mother were taking their homely meal alone; and when I asked for their daughter, they wept and said—Agnes was not the girl she had been.” William cast his eyes on the floor. Henry proceeded—“They said a sickness, which they feared would bring her to the grave, had preyed upon her for some time past.  They had procured a doctor: but no remedy was found, and they feared the worst.” “What worst!” cried William (now recovered from the effect of the sudden intelligence, and attempting a smile).  “Do they think she will die?  And do you think it will be for love?  We do not hear of these deaths often, Henry.” “And if she die, who will hear of that?  No one but those interested to conceal the cause: and thus it is, that dying for love becomes a phenomenon.” Henry would have pursued the discourse farther; but William, impatient on all disputes, except where his argument was the better one, retired from the controversy, crying out, “I know my duty, and want no instructor.” It would be unjust to William to say he did not feel for this reported illness of Agnes—he felt, during that whole evening, and part of the next morning—but business, pleasures, new occupations, and new schemes of future success, crowded to dissipate all unwelcome reflections; and he trusted to her youth, her health, her animal spirits, and, above all, to the folly of the gossips’ story of dying for love, as a surety for her life, and a safeguard for his conscience. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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