The recollection of this little trait, so trifling, yet so touching, made him weep even with wildness.  The tears poured down his cheeks in torrents, he sobbed convulsively, his very heart seemed to burst.  For some minutes he leant over the balustrade in a paroxysm of grief.

He looked up.  The convent hill rose before him, bright in the moon; beneath was his garden; around him the humble roofs that he made happy.  It was not without an effort that he recalled the locality, that he remembered he was at Arqua.  And who was sleeping within the house?  Not his wife, Annabel was far away with their daughter.  The vision of his whole life passed before him.  Study and strife, and fame and love; the pride of the philosopher, the rapture of the poet, the blaze of eloquence, the clash of arms, the vows of passion, the execration and the applause of millions; both once alike welcome to his indomitable soul!  And what had they borne to him?  Misery.  He called up the image of his wife, young, beautiful, and noble, with a mind capable of comprehending his loftiest and his finest moods, with a soul of matchless purity, and a temper whose winning tenderness had only been equalled by her elevated sense of self-respect; a woman that might have figured in the days of chivalry, soft enough to be his slave, but too proud to be his victim.  He called up her image in the castle of his fathers, exercising in a domain worthy of such a mistress, all those sweet offices of life which here, in this hired roof in a strange land, and with his crippled means, he had yet found solacing.  He conjured before him a bud by the side of that beauteous flower, sharing all her lustre and all her fragrance, his own Venetia!  What happiness might not have been his?  And for what had he forfeited it?  A dream, with no dream-like beauty; a perturbed, and restless, and agitated dream, from which he had now woke shattered and exhausted.

He had sacrificed his fortune, he had forfeited his country, he had alienated his wife, and he had lost his child; the home of his heroic ancestry, the ancient land whose fame and power they had created, the beauteous and gifted woman who would have clung for ever to his bosom, and her transcendant offspring worthy of all their loves!  Profound philosopher!

The clock of the convent struck the second hour after midnight.  Herbert started.  And all this time where were Annabel and Venetia?  They still lived, they were in the same country, an hour ago they were under the same roof, in the same chamber; their hands had joined, their hearts had opened, for a moment he had dared to believe that all that he cared for might be regained.  And why was it not?  The cause, the cause?  It recurred to him with associations of dislike, of disgust, of wrath, of hatred, of which one whose heart was so tender, and whose reason was so clear, could under the influence of no other feelings have been capable.  The surrounding scene, that had so often soothed his mournful soul, and connected it with the last hours of a spirit to whom he bore much resemblance, was now looked upon with aversion.  To rid himself of ties, now so dreadful, was all his ambition.  He entered the house quickly, and, seating himself in his closet, he wrote these words: