The deep silence—­the strange stillness—­the uncertain light—­the scenes he had lately witnessed—­his altered fortunes—­his degrading pursuits—­the fallen and depraved state of his mind, crowded into his thoughts, and filled his bosom with keen remorse and painful regrets.

“Oh, that I could repent!” he cried, stopping, and clasping his hands together, and fixing his eyes mournfully upon the earth,—­“that I could believe that there was a God—­a heaven—­a hell!  Yet if there be no hereafter, why this stifling sense of guilt—­this ever-haunting miserable consciousness of unworthiness?  Am I worse than other men, or are all men alike—­the circumstances in which they are placed producing that which we denominate good or evil in their characters?  What if I determine to renounce the evil, and cling to the good; would it yet be well with me?  Would Juliet, like a good angel, consent to be my guide, and lead me gently back to the forsaken paths of rectitude and peace?”

While the voice in his heart yet spake to him for good, another voice sounded in his ears, and all his virtuous resolutions melted into air.

“Godfrey,” said the voice of Mary Mathews, “dear Mr. Godfrey, have I become so indifferent to you, that you will neither look at me nor speak to me?”

She was the last person in the world who at that moment he wished to see.  The sight of her recalled him to a sense of his degradation, and all that he had lost by his unhappy connexion with her, and he secretly wished that she had died instead of her father.

“Mary,” he said, coldly, “what do you want with me?  The morning is damp and raw; you had better go home.”

“What do I want with you?” reiterated the girl.  “And is it come to that?  Can you, who have so often sworn to me that you loved me better than anything in heaven or on earth, now ask me, in my misery, what I want with you?”

“Hot-headed rash young men will swear, and foolish girls will believe them,” said Godfrey, putting his arm carelessly round her waist, and drawing her towards him.  “So it has been since the world began, and so it will be until the end of time.”

“Was all you told me, then, false?” said Mary, leaning her head back upon his shoulder, and fixing her large beautiful tearful eyes upon his face.

That look of unutterable fondness banished all Godfrey’s good resolutions.  He kissed the tears from her eyes, as he replied,

“Not exactly, Mary.  But you expect too much.”

“I only ask you not to cease to love me—­not to leave me, Godfrey, for another.”

“Who put such nonsense into your head?”

“William told me that you were going to marry Miss Whitmore.”

“If such were the case, do you think I should be such a fool as to tell William?”