“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.  On my return to the regiment I had flown to the cottage, on the wings of the most impatient and tender love that ever filled the bosom of man for woman.  To my enquiries the landlady replied, that my cousin had been married two days previously, by the military chaplain, to a handsome young officer, who had visited her soon after my departure, and was constantly with her from that moment; and that immediately after the ceremony they had left, but she knew not whither.  Wild, desperate, almost bereft of reason, and with a heart bounding against my bosom, as if each agonising throb were to be its last, I ran like a maniac back into the town, nor paused till I found myself in the presence of your father.  My mind was a volcano, but still I attempted to be calm, even while I charged him, in the most outrageous terms, with his villainy.  Deny it he could not; but, far from excusing it, he boldly avowed and justified the step he had taken, intimating, with a smile full of meaning, there was nothing in a connection with the family of De Haldimar to reflect disgrace on the cousin of Sir Reginald Morton; and that; the highest compliment he could pay his friend was to attach himself to one whom that friend had declared to be so near a relative of his own.  There was a coldness of taunt in these remarks, that implied his sense of the deception I had practised on him, in regard to the true nature of the relationship; and for a moment, while my hand firmly grasped the hilt of my sword, I hesitated whether I should not cut him down at my feet:  I had self-command, however, to abstain from the outrage, and I have often since regretted I had.  My own blood could have been but spilt in atonement for my just revenge; and as for the obloquy attached to the memory of the assassin, it could not have been more bitter than that which has followed me through life.  But what do I say?” fiercely continued the warrior, an exulting ferocity sparkling in his eye, and animating his countenance; “had he fallen, then my vengeance were but half complete.  No; it is now he shall feel the deadly venom in his heart, that has so long banqueted on mine.

“Determined to know from her own lips,” he pursued, to the shuddering Clara, whose hopes, hitherto strongly excited, now, began again to fade beneath the new aspect given to the strange history of this terrible man;—­ “determined to satisfy myself from her own acknowledgment, whether all I had heard was not an imposition, I summoned calmness enough to desire that your mother might confirm in person the alienation of her affection, as nothing short of that could convince me of the truth.  He left the room, and presently re-appeared, conducting her in from another:  I thought she looked more beautiful than ever, but, alas!  I had the inexpressible horror to discover, before a word was uttered, that