I plunged into the heart of Asia.  After two years I returned to Paris, and gave myself up to every species of dissipation.  I drank, gambled, and my midnight carousals would sicken your soul were I to paint all their hideousness.  You have read in the Scriptures of persons possessed of devils?  A savage, mocking, tearing devil held me in bondage.  I sold myself to my Mephistopheles on condition that my revenge might be complete.  I hated the whole world with an intolerable, murderous hate; and to mock and make my race suffer was the only real pleasure I found.  The very name, the bare mention of religion maddened me.  A minister’s daughter, a minister’s son, a minister himself, had withered my young life, and I blasphemously derided all holy things.  Oh, Edna! my darling! it is impossible to paint all the awful wretchedness of that period, when I walked in the world seeking victims and finding many.  Verily,

  ’There’s not a crime
   But takes its proper change out still in crime,
   If once rung on the counter of this world,
   Let sinners look to it.’

Ah! upon how many lovely women have I visited Agnes’s sin of hypocrisy!  Into how many ears have I poured tender words, until fair hands were as good as offered to me, and I turned their love to mockery!  I hated and despised all womanhood; and even in Paris I became notorious as a heartless trifler with the affections I won and trampled under my feet.  Whenever a brilliant and beautiful woman crossed my path, I attached myself to her train of admirers, until I made her acknowledge my power and give public and unmistakable manifestation of her preference for me; then I left her—­a target for the laughter of her circle.  It was not vanity; oh! no, no!  That springs from self-love, and I had none.  It was hate of every thing human, especially of every thing feminine.  One of the fairest faces that ever brightened the haunts of fashion—­a queenly, elegant girl--the pet of her family and of society, now wears serge garments and a black veil, and is immured in an Italian convent, because I entirely won her heart; and when she waited for me to declare my affection and ask her to become my wife, I quitted her side for that of another belle, and never visited her again.  On the day when she bade adieu to the world, I was among the spectators; and as her mournful but lovely eyes sought mine, I laughed, and gloried in the desolation I had wrought.  Sick of Europe, I came home...

  ‘And to a part I come where no light shines.’

My tempting fiend pointed to one whose suffering would atone for much of my misery.  Edna, I withhold nothing; there is much I might conceal, but I scorn to do so.  During one terribly fatal winter, scarlet-fever had deprived Mr. Hammond of four children, leaving him an only daughter—­Annie—­the image of her brother Murray.  Her health was feeble; consumption was stretching its skeleton hands toward her, and her father watched her as a gardener tends