fluttering on the breeze, under her pretty, upturned chin. If ever
repentance could have worked its influence over a guilty soul, it could
not have found a moment more propitious than this, wherein to accomplish
its task, the very last susceptibility of a heart, hardened and inured
to sin was struggling to assert itself, a long, unheeded impulse, was
trying to shake away the fetters of vice and crime, and free itself to
noble action.

The fierce combat between his good and evil spirits waged for an
instant, he must either fall before this commanding angel, or crush with
a mighty blow, and forever, the already weak agent of good, whose "wee
small voice" tantalized him strangely at this moment.

But while he hesitated, his destiny decided itself; a new phase suddenly
substituted his calculating indifference, he felt a strong, jealous
passion flooding his whole soul, he saw the beauty of Honor Edgeworth's
face by an entirely new light, he scorned the suspicion--but the truth
was terribly bare, he had been caught in his own meshes--he loved this
girl. It did not steal upon him, nor come by slow degrees, but rushed in
a crushing torrent of realization, into his heart. All the words of
devotedness and admiration, that he had spoken to her of late, were only
a mockery, to what his passion suggested now.

Love, to so many others an enviable blessing, threatened to be a
miserable portion for him, for naturally enough, coming to him as it did
through the channels of the soul, it had to partake of the unholy nature
of these unhealthy and corrupt by-ways; and hence instead of the pure,
buoyant emotion that fills the honest breast, in the redeeming passion
of its first exalted love, there rushed into the heart of Vivian
Standish, a poisonous torrent of insuperable desire, that held him like