anxiety as to all that regarded my wife's security. Her good sense, her
prudence, her courage, (for courage she had in the midst of her
timidity,) her dignity of manner, the more impressive from the
childlike character of her countenance, all should have combined to
reassure me, and yet they did not. I was still anxious for her safety
to an irrational extent; and to sum up the whole in a most weighty line
of Shakspeare, I lived under the constant presence of a feeling which
only that great observer of human nature (so far as I am aware) has
ever noticed, viz., that merely the excess of my happiness made me
jealous of its ability to last, and in that extent less capable of
enjoying it; that in fact the prelibation of my tears, as a homage to
its fragility, was drawn forth by my very sense that my felicity was
too exquisite; or, in the words of the great master

'I wept to have' [absolutely, by anticipation, shed tears in
possessing] 'what I so feared to lose.'

Thus end my explanations, and I now pursue my narrative: Agnes, as I
have said, came into my room again before leaving the house--we
conversed for five minutes--we parted--she went out--her last words
being that she would return at half-past one o'clock; and not long
after that time, if ever mimic bells--bells of rejoicing, or bells of
mourning, are heard in desert spaces of the air, and (as some have
said) in unreal worlds, that mock our own, and repeat, for ridicule,
the vain and unprofitable motions of man, then too surely, about this
hour, began to toll the funeral knell of my earthly happiness--its
final hour had sounded.

* * * * *