He
related his discovery or suspicion of a secret sympathy between his
sister and Walter Brome, and told how a distempered jealousy had maddened
him. In the following passage, I threw a glimmering light on the mystery
of the tale.
"Searching," continued Leonard, "into the breast of Walter Brome, I at
length found a cause why Alice must inevitably love him. For he was my
very counterpart! I compared his mind by each individual portion, and as
a whole, with mine. There was a resemblance from which I shrunk with
sickness, and loathing, and horror, as if my own features had come and
stared upon me in a solitary place, or had met me in struggling through a
crowd. Nay! the very same thoughts would often express themselves in the
same words from our lips, proving a hateful sympathy in our secret souls.
His education, indeed, in the cities of the old world, and mine in the
rude wilderness, had wrought a superficial difference. The evil of his
character, also, had been strengthened and rendered prominent by a
reckless and ungoverned life, while mine had been softened and purified
by the gentle and holy nature of Alice. But my soul had been conscious
of the germ of all the fierce and deep passions, and of all the many
varieties of wickedness, which accident had brought to their full
maturity in him.
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