wonder, the likeness of that being who was stretched upon the bed now
stood before me.

All that I am able to conceive of angel was comprised in the moral
constitution of this woman. That her genius had overleaped all bounds,
and interposed to save her, was no audacious imagination. In the state
in which my mind then was, no other belief than this could occupy the
first place.

My tongue was tied. I gazed by turns upon her who stood before me, and
her who lay upon the bed, and who, awakened by the shriek that had been
uttered, now opened her eyes. She started from her pillow, and, by
assuming a new and more distinct attitude, permitted me to recognise
_Clarice herself_!

Three days before, I had left her, beside the bed of a dying friend, at
a solitary mansion in the mountains of Donegal. Here it had been her
resolution to remain till her friend should breathe her last. Fraught
with this persuasion, knowing this to be the place and hour of repose of
my lady, hurried forward by the impetuosity of my own conceptions,
deceived by the faint gleam which penetrated through the curtain and
imperfectly-irradiated features which bore, at all times, a powerful
resemblance to those of Mrs. Lorimer, I had rushed to the brink of this
terrible precipice!

Why did I linger on the verge? Why, thus perilously situated, did I not
throw myself headlong? The steel was yet in my hand. A single blow would
have pierced my heart, and shut out from my remembrance and foresight
the past and the future.