“So much, my dearest Lionel, I have said, wishing to persuade you that I do right.  If you are unconvinced, I can add nothing further by way of argument, and I can only declare my fixed resolve.  I stay here; force only can remove me.  Be it so; drag me away—­I return; confine me, imprison me, still I escape, and come here.  Or would my brother rather devote the heart-broken Perdita to the straw and chains of a maniac, than suffer her to rest in peace beneath the shadow of His society, in this my own selected and beloved recess?”—­

All this appeared to me, I own, methodized madness.  I imagined, that it was my imperative duty to take her from scenes that thus forcibly reminded her of her loss.  Nor did I doubt, that in the tranquillity of our family circle at Windsor, she would recover some degree of composure, and in the end, of happiness.  My affection for Clara also led me to oppose these fond dreams of cherished grief; her sensibility had already been too much excited; her infant heedlessness too soon exchanged for deep and anxious thought.  The strange and romantic scheme of her mother, might confirm and perpetuate the painful view of life, which had intruded itself thus early on her contemplation.

On returning home, the captain of the steam packet with whom I had agreed to sail, came to tell me, that accidental circumstances hastened his departure, and that, if I went with him, I must come on board at five on the following morning.  I hastily gave my consent to this arrangement, and as hastily formed a plan through which Perdita should be forced to become my companion.  I believe that most people in my situation would have acted in the same manner.  Yet this consideration does not, or rather did not in after time, diminish the reproaches of my conscience.  At the moment, I felt convinced that I was acting for the best, and that all I did was right and even necessary.

I sat with Perdita and soothed her, by my seeming assent to her wild scheme.  She received my concurrence with pleasure, and a thousand times over thanked her deceiving, deceitful brother.  As night came on, her spirits, enlivened by my unexpected concession, regained an almost forgotten vivacity.  I pretended to be alarmed by the feverish glow in her cheek; I entreated her to take a composing draught; I poured out the medicine, which she took docilely from me.  I watched her as she drank it.  Falsehood and artifice are in themselves so hateful, that, though I still thought I did right, a feeling of shame and guilt came painfully upon me.  I left her, and soon heard that she slept soundly under the influence of the opiate I had administered.  She was carried thus unconscious on board; the anchor weighed, and the wind being favourable, we stood far out to sea; with all the canvas spread, and the power of the engine to assist, we scudded swiftly and steadily through the chafed element.