ABSTRACT
Angelo returned home; his head and heart filled with the wildest anarchy of sensation – passion, remorse, delight, and wretchedness; he now began to see, too plainly, the error he had been guilty of, in trusting himself so frequently in the society of a fascinating object; but felt, alas! that it was now impossible to recede; and though his vivid imagination presented to him images of horror around, he felt that he must inevitably rush among them; for the long-smothered passion, that now flamed in defiance of reason and honor in his breast, had too furiously burst forth to be restrained; he had fled – hastily fled, and so far, for the moment, had struggled successfully against the dangerous voice of delusion, from the lovely and too captivating Paulina. But with dismay, and bitter regret, he acknowledged, that he could never more be capable of such resolution. The remainder of the day, and the whole night, he passed in misery and self-accusation, but above all in thinking of his love. The images of the injured Gabrielle and his unconscious child stood before him in melancholy and reproachful seeming, but above all towered that of Paulina; now that he had discovered she loved him, to aim at victory over himself was vain, and though he felt his error, the seducing conviction of her tenderness, so innocently avowed, relaxed his energy, and incapacitated him even from the attempt.
