Nor will I deny that, in the accursed one, I could see
the withered blossom of every virtue, which, by a happier culture, had
been made to bring forth fruit in me. Now, here was a man whom Alice
might love with all the strength of sisterly affection, added to that
impure passion which alone engrosses all the heart. The stranger would
have more than the love which had been gathered to me from the many
graves of our household--and I be desolate!"
Leonard Doane went on to describe the insane hatred that had kindled his
heart into a volume of hellish flame. It appeared, indeed, that his
jealousy had grounds, so far as that Walter Brome had actually sought the
love of Alice, who also had betrayed an undefinable, but powerful
interest in the unknown youth. The latter, in spite of his passion for
Alice, seemed to return the loathful antipathy of her brother; the
similarity of their dispositions made them like joint possessors of an
individual nature, which could not become wholly the property of one,
unless by the extinction of the other. At last, with the sane devil in
each bosom, they chanced to meet, they two, on a lonely road. While
Leonard spoke, the wizard had sat listening to what he already knew, yet
with tokens of pleasurable interest, manifested by flashes of expression
across his vacant features, by grisly smiles, and by a word here and
there, mysteriously filling up some void in the narrative.
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