CHAPTER IV.
PITY me not, but lend thy serious hearing
To what I shall unfold.--_Hamlet_.
LETTER FROM ERNEST MALTRAVERS TO EVELYN CAMERON.
EVELYN!
All that you have read of faithlessness and perfidy will seem tame to you
when compared with that conduct which you are doomed to meet from me. We
must part, and for ever. We have seen each other for the last time. It
is bootless even to ask the cause. Believe that I am fickle, false,
heartless,--that a whim has changed me, if you will. My resolve is
unalterable. We meet no more even as friends. I do not ask you either
to forgive or to remember me. Look on me as one wholly unworthy even of
resentment! Do not think that I write this in madness or in fever or
excitement. Judge me not by my seeming illness this morning. I invent
no excuse, no extenuation, for my broken faith and perjured vows.
Calmly, coldly, and deliberately I write; and thus writing, I renounce
your love.
This language is wanton cruelty,--it is fiendish insult,--is it not,
Evelyn? Am I not a villain? Are you not grateful for your escape? Do
you not look on the past with a shudder at the precipice on which you
stood?
I have done with this subject,--I turn to another. We are parted,
Evelyn, and forever. Do not fancy,--I repeat, do not fancy that there is
any error, any strange infatuation on my mind, that there is any
possibility that the sentence can be annulled. It were almost easier to
call the dead from the grave than bring us again together, as we were and
as we hoped to be. Now that you are convinced of that truth, learn, as
soon as you have recovered the first shock of knowing how much wickedness
there is on earth,--learn to turn to the future for happier and more
suitable ties than those you could have formed with me. You are very
young; in youth our first impressions are lively but evanescent,--you
will wonder hereafter at having fancied you loved me. Another and a
fairer image will replace mine. This is what I desire and pray for. _As
soon as I learn that you love another, that you are wedded to another, I
will re-appear in the world; till then, I am a wanderer and an exile.
Your hand alone can efface from my brow the brand of Cain!_ When I am
gone, Lord Vargrave will probably renew his suit. I would rather you
married one of your own years,--one whom you could love fondly, one who
would chase away every remembrance of the wretch who now forsakes you.
But perhaps I have mistaken Lord Vargrave's character; perhaps he may be
worthier of you than I deemed (_I_ who set up for the censor of other
men!); perhaps he may both win and deserve your affection.
Evelyn, farewell! God, who tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, will
watch over you!
ERNEST MALTRAVERS.
