Time went on.  Raymond, stopping mid-way in his wild career, paused suddenly to think of consequences.  Two results presented themselves in the view he took of the future.  That his intercourse with Evadne should continue a secret to, or that finally it should be discovered by Perdita.  The destitute condition, and highly wrought feelings of his friend prevented him from adverting to the possibility of exiling himself from her.  In the first event he had bidden an eternal farewell to open-hearted converse, and entire sympathy with the companion of his life.  The veil must be thicker than that invented by Turkish jealousy; the wall higher than the unscaleable tower of Vathek, which should conceal from her the workings of his heart, and hide from her view the secret of his actions.  This idea was intolerably painful to him.  Frankness and social feelings were the essence of Raymond’s nature; without them his qualities became common-place; without these to spread glory over his intercourse with Perdita, his vaunted exchange of a throne for her love, was as weak and empty as the rainbow hues which vanish when the sun is down.  But there was no remedy.  Genius, devotion, and courage; the adornments of his mind, and the energies of his soul, all exerted to their uttermost stretch, could not roll back one hair’s breadth the wheel of time’s chariot; that which had been was written with the adamantine pen of reality, on the everlasting volume of the past; nor could agony and tears suffice to wash out one iota from the act fulfilled.

But this was the best side of the question.  What, if circumstance should lead Perdita to suspect, and suspecting to be resolved?  The fibres of his frame became relaxed, and cold dew stood on his forehead, at this idea.  Many men may scoff at his dread; but he read the future; and the peace of Perdita was too dear to him, her speechless agony too certain, and too fearful, not to unman him.  His course was speedily decided upon.  If the worst befell; if she learnt the truth, he would neither stand her reproaches, or the anguish of her altered looks.  He would forsake her, England, his friends, the scenes of his youth, the hopes of coming time, he would seek another country, and in other scenes begin life again.  Having resolved on this, he became calmer.  He endeavoured to guide with prudence the steeds of destiny through the devious road which he had chosen, and bent all his efforts the better to conceal what he could not alter.

The perfect confidence that subsisted between Perdita and him, rendered every communication common between them.  They opened each other’s letters, even as, until now, the inmost fold of the heart of each was disclosed to the other.  A letter came unawares, Perdita read it.  Had it contained confirmation, she must have been annihilated.  As it was, trembling, cold, and pale, she sought Raymond.  He was alone, examining some petitions lately presented.  She entered silently, sat on a sofa opposite to him, and gazed on him with a look of such despair, that wildest shrieks and dire moans would have been tame exhibitions of misery, compared to the living incarnation of the thing itself exhibited by her.