But this was only a momentary relief and my old habits of feeling returned; for I was doomed while in life to grieve, and to the natural sorrow of my father’s death and its most terrific cause, immagination added a tenfold weight of woe.  I believed myself to be polluted by the unnatural love I had inspired, and that I was a creature cursed and set apart by nature.  I thought that like another Cain, I had a mark set on my forehead to shew mankind that there was a barrier between me and they [sic].[72] Woodville had told me that there was in my countenance an expression as if I belonged to another world; so he had seen that sign:  and there it lay a gloomy mark to tell the world that there was that within my soul that no silence could render sufficiently obscure.  Why when fate drove me to become this outcast from human feeling; this monster with whom none might mingle in converse and love; why had she not from that fatal and most accursed moment, shrouded me in thick mists and placed real darkness between me and my fellows so that I might never more be seen?, [sic] and as I passed, like a murky cloud loaded with blight, they might only perceive me by the cold chill I should cast upon them; telling them, how truly, that something unholy was near?  Then I should have lived upon this dreary heath unvisited, and blasting none by my unhallowed gaze.  Alas!  I verily believe that if the near prospect of death did not dull and soften my bitter [fe]elings, if for a few months longer I had continued to live as I then lived, strong in body, but my soul corrupted to its core by a deadly cancer[,] if day after day I had dwelt on these dreadful sentiments I should have become mad, and should have fancied myself a living pestilence:  so horrible to my own solitary thoughts did this form, this voice, and all this wretched self appear; for had it not been the source of guilt that wants a name?[73]

This was superstition.  I did not feel thus franticly when first I knew that the holy name of father was become a curse to me:  but my lonely life inspired me with wild thoughts; and then when I saw Woodville & day after day he tried to win my confidence and I never dared give words to my dark tale, I was impressed more strongly with the withering fear that I was in truth a marked creature, a pariah, only fit for death.

[F] Spencer’s Faery Queen Book 1—­Canto [9]

CHAPTER XII

As I was perpetually haunted by these ideas, you may imagine that the influence of Woodville’s words was very temporary; and that although I did not again accuse him of unkindness, yet I soon became as unhappy as before.  Soon after this incident we parted.  He heard that his mother was ill, and he hastened to her.  He came to take leave of me, and we walked together on the heath for the last time.  He promised that he would come and see me again; and bade me take cheer, and to encourage what happy thoughts I could, untill time and fortitude should overcome my misery, and I could again mingle in society.