a love equal to your own. I loved my mother; I loved Gerald; I loved
Montreuil. It was a part of my nature to love, and I did not resist the
impulse. You I loved better than all; but I was jealous of each. If my
mother caressed you or Gerald, if you opened your heart to either, it
stung me to the quick. I it was who said to my mother, "Caress him not,
or I shall think you love him better than me." I it was who widened,
from my veriest childhood, the breach between Gerald and yourself. I it
was who gave to the childish reproach a venom, and to the childish
quarrel a barb. Was this love? Yes, it was love; but I could not
endure that ye should love one another as ye loved me. It delighted me
when one confided to my ear a complaint against the other, and said,
"Aubrey, this blow could not have come from thee!"

Montreuil early perceived my bias of temper: he might have corrected it
and with ease. I was not evil in disposition; I was insensible of my
own vice. Had its malignity been revealed to me, I should have recoiled
in horror. Montreuil had a vast power over me; he could mould me at his
will. Montreuil, I repeat, might have saved me, and thyself, and a
third being, better and purer than either of us was, even in our
cradles. Montreuil did not: he had an object to serve, and he
sacrificed our whole house to it. He found me one day weeping over a
dog that I had killed. "Why did you destroy it?" he said; and I
answered, "Because it loved Morton better than me!" And the priest
said, "Thou didst right, Aubrey!" Yes, from that time he took advantage
of my infirmity, and could rouse or calm all my passions in proportion
as he irritated or soothed it.

You know this man's object during the latter period of his residence
with us: it was the restoration of the House of Stuart. He was
alternately the spy and the agitator in that cause. Among more