There is only one human being who could have assisted me, and that is he who has rather chosen to add to my embarrassment--Rashleigh Osbaldistone .-- Yes! the time once was that I might have learned to love that man--But, great God! the purpose for which he insinuated himself into the confidence of one already so forlorn--the undeviating and continued assiduity with which he pursued that purpose from year to year, without one single momentary pause of remorse or compassion--the purpose for which he would have converted into poison the food he administered to my mind--Gracious Providence! what should I have been in this world, and the next, in body and soul, had I fallen under the arts of this accomplished villain!" I was so much struck with the scene of perfidious treachery which these words disclosed, that I rose from my chair hardly knowing what I did, laid my hand on the hilt of my sword, and was about to leave the apartment in search of him on whom I might discharge my just indignation.
Almost breathless, and with eyes and looks in which scorn and indignation had given way to the most lively alarm, Miss Vernon threw herself between me and the door of the apartment.
"Stay!" she said--"stay!--however just your resentment, you do not know half the secrets of this fearful prison-house." She then glanced her eyes anxiously round the room, and sunk her voice almost to a whisper--"He bears a charmed life; you cannot assail him without endangering other lives, and wider destruction.

Had it been otherwise, in some hour of justice he had hardly been safe, even from this weak hand.

I told you," she said, motioning me back to my seat, "that I needed no comforter.

I now tell you I need no avenger." I resumed my seat mechanically, musing on what she said, and recollecting also, what had escaped me in my first glow of resentment, that I had no title whatever to constitute myself Miss Vernon's champion.

She paused to let her own emotions and mine subside, and then addressed me with more composure.
"I have already said that there is a mystery connected with Rashleigh, of a dangerous and fatal nature.