Sudden Lesson and New Suspicions

That fifth act of mine! what was it to be? Involuntarily my lips
uttered the name of William Edgerton! I started as if I had trodden
upon a viper. The denouement of the drama at once grew up before
my eyes. I felt the dagger in my grasp; I actually drew it from my
bosom. I saw the victim before me--a smile upon his lips--a fire
in his glance--an ardor, an intelligence, that looked like exulting
passion; and my own eyes grew dim. I was blinded; but, even in the
darkness, I struck with fatal precision. I felt the resistance,
I heard the groan and the falling body; and my hair rose, with a
cold, moist life of its own, upon my clammy and shrinking temples.

I recovered from the delusion. My dagger had been piercing the empty
air; but the feeling and the horror in my soul were not less real
because the deed had been one of fancy only. The foregone conclusion
was in tny mind, and I well knew that fate would yet bring the
victim to the altar.

I know not how I reached my dwelling, but when there I was soon
brought to a sober condition of the senses. I found everything in
commotion. Mrs. Delaney, late Clifford, was there, busy in my wife's
chamber, while her husband, surly with such an interruption to his
domestic felicity, even at the threshold, was below, kicking his
heels in solemn disquietude in the parlor. The servants had been
despatched to bring her and to seek me, in the first moments of
my wife's danger. She had consciousness enough for that, and Mrs.
Delaney had summoned the physician. He too--the excellent old man,
who had assisted us in our clandestine marriage--he too was there;
sad, troubled, and regarding me with looks of apprehension and rebuke
which seemed to ask why I was abroad at that late hour, leaving my
wife under such circumstances. I could not meet his glance with a
manly eye. They brought me the dead infant--poor atom of mortality--no
longer mortal; but I turned away from the spectacle. I dared not
look upon it. It was the form of a perished hope, ended in a dream!
And such a dream! The physician gave me a brief explanation of the
condition of things.