recompense that was her due. Those consequences of her treachery, which
I hasten to relate, have ceased to others--to her they remain. Amidst
the pleasures of dissipation, one reflection has rankled at her mind; one
dark cloud has rested between the sunshine and her soul; like the
murderer in Shakespeare, the revel where she fled for forgetfulness has
teemed to her with the spectres of remembrance. O thou untameable
conscience! thou that never flatterest--thou that watchest over the human
heart never to slumber or to sleep--it is thou that takest from us the
present, barrest to us the future, and knittest the eternal chain that
binds us to the rock and the vulture of the past!

The evening came on still and dark; a breathless and heavy apprehension
seemed gathered over the air: the full large clouds lay without motion in
the dull sky, from between which, at long and scattered intervals, the
wan stars looked out; a double shadow seemed to invest the grouped and
gloomy trees that stood unwaving in the melancholy horizon. The waters
of the lake lay heavy and unagitated as the sleep of death; and the
broken reflections of the abrupt and winding banks rested upon their
bosoms, like the dreamlike remembrance of a former existence.

The hour of the appointment was arrived: Falkland stood by the spot,
gazing upon the lake before him; his cheek was flushed, his hand was
parched and dry with the consuming fire within him. His pulse beat thick
and rapidly; the demon of evil passions was upon his soul. He stood so
lost in his own reflections, that he did not for some moments perceive
the fond and tearful eye which was fixed upon him on that brow and lip,
thought seemed always so beautiful, so divine, that to disturb its repose
was like a profanation of something holy; and though Emily came towards
him with a light and hurried step, she paused involuntarily to gaze upon
that noble countenance which realised her earliest visions of the beauty