I pitied--yes, I pitied--the wretched life to which her cold and selfish relations had doomed her.

I knew that she could not live long; but the thought that before her death she might give birth to some ill-fated being, destined to hand down madness to its offspring, determined me.

I resolved to kill her.
'For many weeks I thought of poison, and then of drowning, and then of fire.

A fine sight, the grand house in flames, and the madman's wife smouldering away to cinders.

Think of the jest of a large reward, too, and of some sane man swinging in the wind for a deed he never did, and all through a madman's cunning! I thought often of this, but I gave it up at last.