“Kill me! kill me!” ejaculated she; “it was I that did it!  Obeah is great—­he has saved you.  Kill me, and I shall die happy, now you are safe—­do kill me!”

I listened to these frantic exclamations with perfect calmness.  When she was a little more composed, I desired her to rise.  She obeyed, and looked the image of despair, for she thought I should immediately quit her for the arms of her more fortunate rival, and she considered my innocence as fully established by the appearance of the deity.

“Carlotta,” said I, “what would you have done if you had succeeded in killing me?”

“I will shew you,” said she; when, going to a closet, the took out another basin of coffee; and before I could dash it from her lips, as I had the former one from the black woman, the infatuated girl had swallowed a small portion of it.

“What else can I do?” said she; “my happiness is gone for ever.”

“No, Carlotta,” said I; “I do not wish for your death, though you have plotted mine.  I have been faithful to you, and loved you, until you made this attempt.”

“Will you forgive me before I die?” said she; “for die I must, now that I know you will quit me!” Uttering these words, she threw herself on the floor with violence, and her head coming in contact with the broken fragments of the basin, she cut herself, and bled so copiously that she fainted.  The old woman had fled, and I was left alone with her, for poor little Sophy was frightened, and had hidden herself.

I lifted Carlotta from the floor, and, placing her in a chair, I washed her face with cold water; and having staunched the blood, I laid her on her bed, when she began to breathe and to sob convulsively.  I sat myself by her side; and as I contemplated her pale face and witnessed her grief, I fell into a train of melancholy retrospection on my numerous acts of vice and folly.

“How many warnings,” said I, “how many lessons am I to receive before I shall reform?  How narrowly have I escaped being sent to my account ‘unanealed’ and unprepared!  What must have been my situation if I had at this moment been called into the presence of my offended Creator?  This poor girl is pure and innocent, compared with me, taking into consideration the advantages of education on my side, and the want of it on hers.  What has produced all this misery and the dreadful consequences which might have ensued, but my folly in trifling with the feelings of an innocent girl, and winning her affections merely to gratify my own vanity; at the same time that I have formed a connection with this unhappy creature, the breaking of which will never cause me one hour’s regret, while it will leave her in misery, and will, in all probability, embitter all her future existence?  What shall I do?  Forgive, as I hope to be forgiven:  the fault was more mine than hers.”