CHAPTER IX.
Fain would I draw a veil over the transactions of that night--but I cannot--grief, and burning shame, forbid me to be silent--black deeds are about to be made public, which reflect a stain upon our common nature.
Rosamund, enthusiastic and improvident, wandered unprotected to a distance from her guardian doors--through lonely glens, and wood-walks, where she had rambled many a _day_ in safety--till she arrived at a shady copse, out of the hearing of any human habitation.
_Matravis_ met her.---"Flown with insolence and wine," returning home late at night, he passed that way! Matravis was a very ugly man.

Sallow-complexioned! and if hearts can wear that color, his heart was sallow-complexioned also.
A young man with _gray_ deliberation! cold and systematic in all his plans; and all his plans were evil.

His very lust was systematic.
He would brood over his bad purposes for such a dreary length of time that, it might have been expected, some solitary check of conscience must have intervened to save him from commission.

But that _Light from Heaven_ was extinct in his dark bosom.
Nothing that is great, nothing that is amiable, existed for this unhappy man.

He feared, he envied, he suspected; but he never loved.
The sublime and beautiful in nature, the excellent and becoming in morals, were things placed beyond the capacity of his sensations.