In fact, the man’s mind was a turbid chaos of reflections upon the past and the future, in which selfishness, disappointed vengeance, terror, hypocritical policy, and every feeling that could fill the imagination of a man possessed of a vacillating, cowardly, and cruel heart, with the exception only of any thing that could border upon penitence or remorse.  That Miss Folliard was not indifferent to him is true; but the feeling which he experienced towards her contained only two elements—­sensuality and avarice.  Of love, in its purest, highest, and holiest sense, he was utterly incapable; and he was not ignorant himself that, in the foul attachment which he bore her, he was only carrying into effect the principles of his previous life—­those of a private debauchee, and a miser.  That amiable, but unhappy and distracted, lady spent that whole evening in making preparations for her flight with Reilly.  Her manner was wild and excited; indeed, so much so that the presence of mind and cool good sense, for which her maid Connor was remarkable, were scarcely sufficient to guide and direct her in this distressing emergency.  She seemed to be absorbed by but one thought, and that was of her father.  His affection for her enlarged and expanded itself in her loving heart, with a force and tenderness that nearly drove her into delirium.  Connor, in the meantime, got all things ready, she herself having entrusted the management of every thing to her.  The unhappy girl paced to and fro her room, sobbing and weeping bitterly, wringing her hands, and exclaiming from time to time: 

“Oh, my father! my dear and loving father! is this the return I am making you for your tenderness and affection? what am I about to do? what steps am I going to take? to leave you desolate, with no heart for yours to repose upon!  Alas! there was but one heart that you cared for, and in the duty and affection of that all your hopes for my happiness lay; and now, when you awake, you will find that that heart, the very heart | on which you rested, has deserted you!  When you come down to breakfast in the morning, and find that your own Helen, your only one, has gone—­oh! who will sustain, or soothe, or calm you in the frenzied grief of your desolation?  But alas! what can I do but escape from that cowardly and vindictive villain—­the very incarnation of oppression and persecution; the hypocrite, the secret debauchee, the mean, the dastardly, whose inhuman ambition was based upon and nurtured by blood?  Alas!  I have but the one remedy—­flight with my noble minded lover, whom that dastardly villain would have hunted, even to his murder, or an ignominious death, which would have been worse.  This flight is not spontaneously mine; I am forced to it, and of two evils I will choose the least; surely I am not bound to seal my own misery forever.”

Connor had by this time attempted, as far as she could, to disguise her in one of her own dresses; but nothing could conceal the elegance and exquisite proportion of her figure, nor the ladylike harmony and grace of her motions.  She then went to the oaken cabinet, mentioned by her father in the opening of our narrative, and as she always had the key of that portion of it which contained her own diamonds, and other property, she took a casket of jewels of immense value from it, and returned to her room, where she found Connor before her.