To what satanic arts so calculating
a villain could have had recourse to effect his object
I know not; but it is not the less true, that she, from
whom my previous history must have taught you to expect
the purity of intention and conduct of an angel, became
his wife,--and I a being accursed among men. Even as our
common mother is said to have fallen in the garden of
Eden, tempted by the wily beauty of the devil, so did
your mother fall, seduced by that of the cold, false,
traitorous De Haldimar. "Here the agitation of Wacousta
became terrific. The labouring of his chest was like that
of one convulsed with some racking agony and the swollen
veins and arteries of his head seemed to threaten the
extinction of life in some fearful paroxysm. At length
he burst into a violent fit of tears, more appalling, in
one of his iron nature, than the fury which had preceded
it,--and it was many minutes before he could so far
compose himself as to resume.
"Think not, Clara de Haldimar, I speak without the proof.
Her own words confessed, her own lips avowed it, and yet
I neither slew her, nor her paramour, nor myself.
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