With most men there was an intimate and indignant persuasion of Aram's
innocence; and at this day, in the county where he last resided, there
still lingers the same belief. Firm as his gospel faith, that conviction
rested in the mind of the worthy Lester; and he sought, by every means he
could devise, to soothe and cheer the confinement of his friend. In
prison, however (indeed after his examination--after Aram had made
himself thoroughly acquainted with all the circumstantial evidence which
identified Clarke with Geoffrey Lester, a story that till then he had
persuaded himself wholly to disbelieve) a change which, in the presence
of Madeline or her father, he vainly attempted wholly to conceal, and to
which, when alone, he surrendered himself with a gloomy abstraction--came
over his mood, and dashed him from the lofty height of Philosophy, from
which he had before looked down on the peril and the ills below.

Sometimes he would gaze on Lester with a strange and glassy eye, and
mutter inaudibly to himself, as if unaware of the old man's presence; at
others, he would shrink from Lester's proffered hand, and start abruptly
from his professions of unaltered, unalterable regard; sometimes he would
sit silently, and, with a changeless and stony countenance, look upon
Madeline as she now spoke in that exalted tone of consolation which had
passed away from himself; and when she had done, instead of replying to
her speech, he would say abruptly, "Ay, at the worst you love me, then--
love me better than any one on earth--say that, Madeline, again say
that!"

And Madeline's trembling lips obeyed the demand.

"Yes," he would renew, "this man, whom they accuse me of murdering,
this,--your uncle,--him you never saw since you were an infant, a mere
infant; him you could not love! What was he to you?--yet it is dreadful