What I had already suffered produced such an effect upon me, that I was reduced to the condition of a sickly, lingering creature, destitute of the sustaining power that enables the most wretched of mortals to support their existence, and continue on this stage of crime and misery. Even my cherished views of the grace and beauty of my favourite ethics ceased to yield me any pleasure; all my thoughts, hopes, and feelings were absorbed by the one great and ever-present conviction, that I was liable to be suspected--nay, proved--a robber; and every ring of the door-bell sounded in my ears as the prelude to my ruin. My condition was soon noticed by the solicitude of my benefactors, who, by inviting company to the house, endeavoured to drive away what they termed my sorrow for my aunt. Mrs Ball and Anne Ball were of these parties. They looked at me as if they enjoyed some signal triumph; and though, by crouching into the corner of the room, I tried to avoid them, they seemed to take a delight in following me, and contrasting the hilarity of their joy with the gloom of my melancholy. Shall I ever forget the looks of these women? When shall their words fade from my ear? Anne Ball put a question to me--Why did I not wear my aunt's diamond necklace? I swooned, and was carried out. What a night was that!
In the morning I forced myself to the breakfast table, though I could scarcely walk that length. Augustus had, for several hours, been studying some portions of Plato, where that philosopher, as he said, arrays, in the most beautiful language of any nation on earth, the most exalted ideas of man's capabilities in the great field of heaven-directed virtue that ever fired the brain of the philosophic philanthropist. Ill as I was, I listened to his description of what he had read; but every word was a dagger whose hilt was set with rubies, whose point sought my heart. The thrilling and swelling emotions which would, at one time, have obeyed the sounds of his voice, attuned to such music of moral spheres, seemed to fall back upon my heart and suffocate me. The bell of the outer door now rang with considerable vehemence, and I heard the steps of several individuals enter. I thought I heard my own name mentioned, and shortly the step of one person, the others apparently remaining below, was heard upon the stair. The parlour-door opened, and George Ball, holding in his hand a paper, stood before us. He bowed to Augustus and his mother; but to me he threw only the glance of a cunning, triumphant eye. My heart was still; every muscle, voluntary and involuntary, seemed bound up in the grasp of a spasm; and freezing fear, in place of breath, when my lungs played not, sustained me as a statue is sustained. George Ball spoke--