that more was necessary from him than from others,—­lavishing his treasures as if to bribe mankind to receive him into their class.  It is scarcely necessary to say, that the bounty which flowed from a source so capricious was often abused, and his confidence frequently betrayed.  These disappointments, which occur to all, more or less, and most to such as confer benefits without just discrimination, his diseased fancy set down to the hatred and contempt excited by his personal deformity.—­But I fatigue you, Miss Vere?”

“No, by no means; I—­I could not prevent my attention from wandering an instant; pray proceed.”

“He became at length,” continued Ratcliffe, “the most ingenious self-tormentor of whom I have ever heard; the scoff of the rabble, and the sneer of the yet more brutal vulgar of his own rank, was to him agony and breaking on the wheel.  He regarded the laugh of the common people whom he passed on the street, and the suppressed titter, or yet more offensive terror, of the young girls to whom he was introduced in company, as proofs of the true sense which the world entertained of him, as a prodigy unfit to be received among them on the usual terms of society, and as vindicating the wisdom of his purpose in withdrawing himself from among them.  On the faith and sincerity of two persons alone, he seemed to rely implicitly—­on that of his betrothed bride, and of a friend eminently gifted in personal accomplishments, who seemed, and indeed probably was, sincerely attached to him.  He ought to have been so at least, for he was literally loaded with benefits by him whom you are now about to see.  The parents of the subject of my story died within a short space of each other.  Their death postponed the marriage, for which the day had been fixed.  The lady did not seem greatly to mourn this delay,—­perhaps that was not to have been expected; but she intimated no change of intention, when, after a decent interval, a second day was named for their union.  The friend of whom I spoke was then a constant resident at the Hall.  In an evil hour, at the earnest request and entreaty of this friend, they joined a general party, where men of different political opinions were mingled, and where they drank deep.  A quarrel ensued; the friend of the Recluse drew his sword with others, and was thrown down and disarmed by a more powerful antagonist.  They fell in the struggle at the feet of the Recluse, who, maimed and truncated as his form appears, possesses, nevertheless, great strength, as well as violent passions.  He caught up a sword, pierced the heart of his friend’s antagonist, was tried, and his life, with difficulty, redeemed from justice at the expense of a year’s close imprisonment, the punishment of manslaughter.  The incident affected him most deeply, the more that the deceased was a man of excellent character, and had sustained gross insult and injury ere he drew his sword.  I think, from that moment, I observed—­I beg pardon—­The fits of morbid sensibility