One of these, less known to the public in later times, we think transcends all the others in boldness of conception, regularity of plot, variety of passion and character displayed, and horror and pathos of catastrophe.  It might have furnished a worthy subject to the pen of Sophocles or Shakespeare, one that they would have found already cast into a highly dramatic form, requiring only fitting words to convey the passions of the actors.  Little invention of situation or incident would have been needed, for neither could be imagined more intensely interesting; nor could the most finished artist have constructed a plot more coherent in all its details, or more strictly in accordance with the rules of composition,—­even to the preservation of the Aristotelian unities of time and place.  So perfect, indeed, does it seem, that, were it not substantiated in every point by the records of a judicial tribunal, it might well be taken for the invention of some master of human nature and the dramatic art.

Captain Cyril Wilde, the hero, or rather the victim, of the events we are about to narrate, was one of those perfectly happy men whom every one has learned to regard as favorites of Fortune, and on whom no one ever expects disaster to fall, simply because it never has done so.  Well descended, at a period when good birth was a positive honor in itself, and connected, either by affinity or friendship, with the best society of Kentucky, he held, by hereditary right, a high position among that old aristocracy which then and for a long time afterward stoutly maintained its own against the encroaching spirit of democratic equality, and whose members still kept in mind many of the traditions, honored in their own persons the dignity, and strove to preserve in their households somewhat of the manners, of the Cavaliers of the Old Dominion.  Nor was wealth wanting to complete his happiness,—­at least, such wealth as was needed by one of his simple tastes and unostentatious habits.  He was rich beyond his disposition to spend, but not beyond his capacity to enjoy,—­a capacity multiplied by as many times as he had friends to stimulate it;—­summer friends, alas! too many of them proved to be.  His character was without reproach; his disposition easy and genial; his mind of that happy middle order which always commands respect, while it feels none of the restless ambition and impotent longing for public recognition that usually attend the possession of superior abilities.

Such was the position of Captain Wilde, and such the character he bore during the first thirty-eight years of his life.  Not many have known a more lengthened prosperity,—­and few, very few, a more sudden and terrible reverse.  Fortune, like a fond mistress, had lavished her gifts on him without stint,—­but, like a jealous one, seemed resolved that he should owe everything to her gratuitous bounty, and the moment he sought to win an object of desire by his own exertions turned her face away forever, persecuting her former favorite thenceforth with vindictive malice.  Continuing to yield, for a time, with apparent complacency, every boon he sought, she treacherously concealed therein the germs of all his woes.