fiend awoke within me; I dismissed your lover; and from that moment I
have known no peace. I have sought in vain for sleep and rest; my lids
refused to close, and my blood was for ever in a tumult. I awoke to a
new life as one who dies in hope might wake in Hell. I will not sully
your imagination by recounting my combats, my self-anger and my
despair. Let a veil be drawn over the unimaginable sensations of a
guilty father; the secrets of so agonized a heart may not be made
vulgar. All was uproar, crime, remorse and hate, yet still the
tenderest love; and what first awoke me to the firm resolve of
conquering my passion and of restoring her father to my child was the
sight of your bitter and sympathizing sorrows. It was this that led me
here: I thought that if I could again awaken in my heart the grief I
had felt at the loss of your mother, and the many associations with
her memory which had been laid to sleep for seventeen years, that all
love for her child would become extinct. In a fit of heroism I
determined to go alone; to quit you, the life of my life, and not to
see you again untill I might guiltlessly. But it would not do: I rated
my fortitude too high, or my love too low. I should certainly have
died if you had not hastened to me. Would that I had been indeed
extinguished!

"And now, Mathilda I must make you my last confession. I have been
miserably mistaken in imagining that I could conquer my love for you;
I never can. The sight of this house, these fields and woods which my
first love inhabited seems to have encreased it: in my madness I dared
say to myself--Diana died to give her birth; her mother's spirit was
transferred into her frame, and she ought to be as Diana to me.[37]
With every effort to cast it off, this love clings closer, this guilty
love more unnatural than hate, that withers your hopes and destroys me
for ever.