have arrogated justice to my own mortal hand; nay, this very night, had
the hazard of either of our lives been necessary to save Evelyn from your
persecution, I would have incurred all things for her sake! But that is
past; from me you have nothing to fear. The proofs of your earlier
guilt, with its dreadful results, would alone suffice to warn me from the
solemn responsibility of human vengeance. Great Heaven! what hand could
dare to send a criminal so long hardened, so black with crime, unatoning,
unrepentant, and unprepared, before the judgment-seat of the ALL JUST?
Go, unhappy man! may life long be spared to you! Awake! awake from this
world, before your feet pass the irrevocable boundary of the next!"

"I came not here to listen to homilies, and the cant of the conventicle,"
said Vargrave, vainly struggling for a haughtiness of mien that his
conscience-stricken aspect terribly belied; "not I; but this wrong world
is to be blamed, if deeds that strict morality may not justify, but the
effects of which I, no prophet, could not foresee, were necessary for
success in life. I have been but as all other men have been who struggle
against fortune to be rich and great: ambition must make use of foul
ladders."

"Oh," said Maltravers, earnestly, touched involuntarily, and in spite of
his abhorrence of the criminal, by the relenting that this miserable
attempt at self-justification seemed to denote,--"oh, be warned, while it
is yet time; wrap not yourself in these paltry sophistries; look back to
your past career; see to what heights you might have climbed, if with
those rare gifts and energies, with that subtle sagacity and indomitable
courage--your ambition had but chosen the straight, not the crooked,
path. Pause! many years may yet, in the course of nature, afford you
time to retrace your steps, to atone to thousands the injuries you have
inflicted on the few. I know not why I thus address you: but something