Nay! the very same thoughts would often
express themselves in the same words from our lips, proving a
hateful sympathy in our secret souls. His education, indeed, in the
cities of the old world, and mine in this rude wilderness, had wrought
a superficial difference. The evil of his character, also, had been
strengthened and rendered prominent by a reckless and ungoverned life,
while mine had been softened and purified by the gentle and holy
nature of Alice. But my soul had been conscious of the germ of all the
fierce and deep passions, and of all the many varieties of wickedness,
which accident had brought to their full maturity in him. Nor will I
deny that, in the accursed one, I could see the withered blossom of
every virtue, which, by a happier culture, had been made to bring
forth fruit in me. Now, here was a man whom Alice might love with
all the strength of sisterly affection, added to that impure passion
which alone engrosses all the heart. The stranger would have more than
the love which had been gathered to me from the many graves of our
household- and I be desolate!"
Leonard Doane went on to describe the insane hatred that had
kindled his heart into a volume of hellish flame.
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