CHAPTER XXIII.
"This first false passion of his breast
Roll'd like a torrent o'er the rest.
He sue for mercy! He dismay'd
By wild words of a timid maid!"
Byron.
Exulting in the hazard which had enabled him thus desperately, and skilfully so far, to execute the dark plan he had formed for securing to himself Rosilia, a sort of dizzy and maddening sensation of hope filled the brain of Melliphant on quitting the tomb in which he had concealed the unhappy girl,
"Still dark in a damp vault, and still alone,"
life and a sense of her misery returning together.
Impatient and breathless, his first object was to confer with his abettor, to whom he owed this favourable commencement of his plot. His next was to fly himself with all dispatch to the castle of Sir Arthur, where he had held his sojourn under fear of detection from his creditors, there to make arrangements for further secreting his prize, and there to await until the shades of night favoured her removal from the tomb.
Darkly ruminating over his fiend-like intention, he
