on a seat. A moment afterwards, he recollected it was no longer his-that it had formed, together with the grounds near it, one of the last bets which he had lost to Kreutzer, and he sprang from it as from a basilisk. Edgar was proud. It is not every young heart that has strength to resist the inflation with which riches seek to fill it. He had not been insensible to the gratification produced by a display of wealth; and he knew that he had excited no inconsiderable degree of envy. To be compelled to appear shorn of his accustomed splendor, was mortifying in a high degree; and to lose the most favourite part of the domain which he had felt a pride in possessing, was not a little galling. His fancy, with wayward perverseness, would busy itself in conjuring up humiliating pictures of the manner in which his change of fortune would be received by those whom he had at once eclipsed and despised—the spiteful malignity of one-the avowed triumph of anotherand the yet more insulting pity and hypocritical condolence of a third. The thought of his only remaining parent, exposed to probable contempt and obloquy, and her very comforts abridged by that son, whose happiness she had made large sacrifices to promote, these embittering images heated his already feverish brain to a temporary madness; and when the back ground of the gloomy picture was filled up by the figure of the lovely and fascinating Clara-more lovely, more fascinating, because lost to him for ever,-reason could no longer maintain the conflict, and in a paroxysm of despair, he found in his grasp a small poniard, which he always carried about his person. Already had it been plucked from its sheath, when his attention was arrested by a sudden sound. It was the morning hymn of the Hindu portion of the establishment, assembled in another part of the grounds to salute the rising sun. The rude, but not inharmonious chorus, as it came upon the ear mellowed by the distance, formed a striking contrast to the gloomy feelings and intentions of the unhappy Edgar. His eye turned in the direction for an instant, with a stern, yet melancholy expression; but his first feelings were too highly wrought to be easily subdued. The dark cloud began again - to gather upon his brow, and his fingers to close upon their weapon, when he suddenly felt a hand upon his arm. He was in that mood, when it is a sort of relief to find an object on whom to vent the storm of passion which has been pent up within the breast; and turning with a fierce gesture upon the intruder, his wild and glaring eye encountered the gentle and pensive glance of Luslaya. CHAPTER IX. He should have died— Tender and true; but why? Why, what is life, Without a living? He hath not a stiver. BYRON. It is said that there is something so seraphic in the pure eye of innocence, that vice and lawless passion cannot endure its glance; and even the savage inmates of the woods have been awed by its powerful spell. This remark, whether true or false as a general position, was certainly borne out on the present occasion; for while Edgar, in his present mood, would have met a stern and lofty glance with one of desperate defiance, there was something in the soft and meek eye of Luslaya that unmanned him in an instant. There was a feeling in his heart not unlike what might be supposed to actuate a fallen angel, who unexpectedly found himself in the presence of one of the spirits of the blessed. A mixed emotion-a sort of compound of awe and shame, which, though he struggled against it, would not be repressed, brought a burning heat upon his cheek, and bent his eye to the earth. He would gladly have hurried from the place, but seemed deprived of the power of moving-he would have spoken, but the words died unuttered on his lip; and he felt the proud superiority of virtue over vice, as he stood humbled and abashed before the being whose very existence hung upon his bounty, while she asked the question, "Friend of the lorn one, what art thou about to do?" His answer was an endeavour to conceal the weapon which had been so rashly bared for his destruction; but Luslaya observed the action, and hastily laid her hand upon his arm: "This must not be," she said; "it is ill-companionship between the desperate hand and the ready steel; unwise |