I walked about the isle like a restless spectre, separated from all it loved and miserable in the separation.

I trembled and my heart failed within me, when, on looking up, I saw by the light of the moon the dæmon at the casement.

I believe I am; but if it be all true, if indeed I did not dream, I am sorry that I am still alive to feel this misery and horror.

But I was doomed to live and in two months found myself as awaking from a dream, in a prison, stretched on a wretched bed, surrounded by gaolers, turnkeys, bolts, and all the miserable apparatus of a dungeon.

Oh! Take him away! I cannot see him; for God's sake, do not let him enter!

I could not bring myself to disclose a secret which would fill my hearer with consternation and make fear and unnatural horror the inmates of his breast.

"I fear, my beloved girl," I said, "little happiness remains for us on earth; yet all that I may one day enjoy is centred in you. Chase away your idle fears; to you alone do I consecrate my life and my endeavours for contentment."

Elizabeth alone had the power to draw me from these fits; her gentle voice would soothe me when transported by passion and inspire me with human feelings when sunk in torpor.

A fiend had snatched from me every hope of future happiness; no creature had ever been so miserable as I was; so frightful an event is single in the history of man.

Mine has been a tale of horrors; I have reached their acme, and what I must now relate can but be tedious to you.