benefit others, strode to a glorious end;—having once convinced myself of this, I was not weak enough to feel a vague remorse for a deed I would not allow, in my case, to be a crime. I did not feel remorse, but I felt regret. The thought that had I waited three days I might have been saved, not from guilt, but from the chance of shame,—from the degradation of sinking to Houseman's equal—of feeling that man had the power to hurt me—that I was no longer above the reach of human malice, or human curiosity—that I was made a slave to my own secret—that I was no longer lord of my heart, to shew or to conceal it—that at any hour, in the possession of honours, by the hearth of love, I might be dragged forth and proclaimed a murderer—that I held my life, my reputation, at the breath of accident—that in the moment I least dreamed of, the earth might yield its dead, and the gibbet demand its victim;—this could I feel—all this—and not make a spectre of the past:—a spectre that walked by my side—that slept at my bed—that rose from my
