He soon found himself in a maze of gravel walks and abrupt turnings, the ascent so steep as to be often indispensably assisted by flights of irregular stone steps. On each shelf of the rock, lately so much above his head, his feet now found a path; though one secured from the precipice only by a superabundant growth of shrubs. On the side of the cliff immediately over the sea it was sometimes quite terrific to peep through the slender defences of a honeysuckle or jessamine at the foaming billows dashing in far below on a wild and rocky beach. At length arrived at the goal of all his labours, he entered the long seen, and, at a distance, formidable-looking tower, and found it fitted up within as a conservatory and well supplied with exotics in full bloom. Of these he plucked, mechanically, a few of the finest blossoms, then sighed and desisted, as the remembrance smote on his heart that he could not now, as he had been wont, present them to Julia. He thrust, however, those he had collected into his own bosom; he could not throw away what had once been, even in thought, associated with her. Near this building the last of the shelving paths tapered off gradually, till there was no longer footing. The rock rose behind it more than perpendicularly—it overhung; while, in front, there was now no defence whatever, not a shrub, not so much as a tuft of grass, or even moss, to break the treacherous surface of the polished flint.
On the furthest portion which it was possible to occupy of this perilous spot, was placed a rustic seat; on this Edmund flung himself, and rested his eyes with a peculiarly desolate feeling on his old friends and companions, the waves of the sea. They seemed pressing after each other, and all, as it were, crowding towards the foot of the steep cliff from the summit of which he thus viewed them. He smiled bitterly: to his distempered fancy they appeared hastening forward to welcome his return amongst them, with a fierce and boisterous species of delight, very uncongenial to the softer emotions in which he had of late so much too frequently indulged.
“Yes,” he ejaculated, “the bosom of the deep is indeed my only home! the wide waste of waters my comfortless domain! To spread desolation around me with fire and with sword! to bring death and misery in my train! to send destruction and despair in the whirlwind before me! these are my daily duties! these my domestic joys!” He paused, then proceeded: “If once there were—friends of the friendless—those who—could—could pity—fate has torn them from me! Nay worse—I must tear myself from them! I must seem ungrateful, unkind—I must teach those who might have loved—to forget me—or—be a villain!” He hastened to add, for certain words in the last sentence were shaking his best resolutions. “Yes, a villain!” he repeated. “Is he less who, wrapped in mystery, without a name, without a home, without a country, would ensnare the innocent affections of one unknowing of the world, unable as yet to judge what may one day be her own appreciation of its honours or even of its prejudices?” After a moment’s pause he pronounced firmly, “I must never see her more!”