all the fondness of her nature was indeed transferred to your father.  How I endured the humiliation of that scene has often been a source of utter astonishment to myself; but I did endure it.  To my wild demand, how she could so soon have forgotten her vows, and falsified her plighted engagements, she replied, timidly and confusedly, she had not yet known her own heart; but if she had pained me by her conduct, she was sorry for it, and hoped I would forgive her.  She would always be happy to esteem me as a friend, but she loved her Charles far, far better than she had ever loved me.  This damning admission, couched in the same language of simplicity that had first touched and won my affection, was like boiling lead upon my brain.  In a transport of madness I sprang towards her, caught her in my arms, and swore she should accompany me back to the oasis—­when I had taken her there, to be regained by my detested rival, if he could; but that he should not eat the fruit I had plucked at so much peril to myself.  She struggled to disengage herself, calling on your father by the most endearing epithets to free her from my embrace.  He attempted it, and I struck him senseless to the floor at a single blow with the flat of my sabre, which in my extreme fury I had unsheathed.  Instead, however, of profiting by the opportunity thus afforded to execute my threat, a feeling of disgust and contempt came over me, for the woman, whose inconstancy had been the cause of my committing myself in this ungentlemanly manner; and bestowing deep but silent curses on her head, I rushed from the house in a state of frenzy.  How often since have I regretted that I had not pursued my first impulse, and borne her to some wild, where, forgetting one by whose beauty of person her eye alone had been seduced, her heart might have returned to its allegiance to him who had first awakened the sympathies of her soul, and would have loved her with a love blending the fiercest fires of the eagle with the gentlest devotedness of the dove.  But destiny had differently ordained.

“Did my injuries end here?” pursued the dark warrior, as his eye kindled with rage.  “No:  for weeks I was insensible to any thing but the dreadful shock my soul had sustained.  A heavy stupor weighed me down, and for a period it was supposed my reason was overthrown:  no such mercy was reserved for me.  The regiment had quitted the Highlands, and were now stationary in ——­, whither I had accompanied it in arrest.  The restoration of my faculties was the signal for new persecutions.  Scarcely had the medical officers reported me fit to sustain the ordeal, when a court-martial was assembled to try me on a variety of charges.  Who was my prosecutor?  Listen, Clara,” and he shook her violently by the arm.  “He who had robbed me of all that gave value to life, and incentive to honour,—­he who, under the guise of friendship, had stolen into the Eden of my love, and left it barren of affection.  In a word, yon detested governor,