Page:Paul Clifford Vol 3.djvu/80

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
72
PAUL CLIFFORD.

remembrance of Lucy in all her charms, her beauty, her love, her tender and innocent heart; Lucy all perfect, and lost to him for ever, banished every other reflection, and only left him the sick sensation of despondency and despair. "What avails my struggle for a better name?" he thought. "She will never know it. Whatever my future lot, she can never share it. My punishment is fixed,—it is worse than a death of shame; it is a life without hope! Every moment I feel, and shall feel to the last, the pressure of a chain that may never be broken or loosened! And yet, fool that I am! I cannot leave this country without seeing her again, without telling her, that I have really looked my last. But have I not twice told her that? Strange fatality! but twice have I spoken to her of love, and each time it was to tear myself from her at the moment of my confession. And even now something that I have no power to resist, compels me to the same idle and weak indulgence. Does destiny urge me? Ay, perhaps to my destruction! Every hour a thousand deaths encompass me. I have now obtained all for which I seemed to linger. I have won by a new crime, enough to bear