I would not be sanguine any more; no, never any more! I saw Mrs Clyde at church the very next Sunday.

I went there in the hope that my darling might have returned, and that I would see her--not from any religious feeling.
There was only her mother there, however.
I waited to accost her at the church door after the service was over.
"Oh, Mrs Clyde," I said, "do not be my enemy!" But, she took no notice of me:--she cut me dead.
I was convinced that all was lost now.
It was of no use my longer attempting to fight against fate:--I gave up hope completely;--and then--and then-- I went to the devil! Rochefoucauld says in his pointed "Maxims" that-- "There is nothing so catching as example; nor is there ever great good or ill done that does not produce its like.

We imitate good actions through emulation, and bad ones through the malignity of our nature, which shame restrains and example emancipates." That was my case now.
I suppose I had had it in me all along--the "black drop," as the Irish peasants call it, of evil; and, that shame had hitherto prevented me from plunging into the whirlpool of sinful indulgence that now drew me, a willing victim, down into its yawning gulf of ruin and degradation.
That bar removed, however, I made rapid progress towards the beckoning devil, who was waiting to receive me with open arms.

I hastened along that path, "where,"-- as Byron has described from his own painful experience-- "-- In a moment, we may plunge our years In fatal penitence, and in the blight Of our own soul, turn all our blood to tears, And colour things to come with hues of night!" I declare to you, that when I look back on this period of my life--life! death, rather I should say, for it was a moral death--I am quite unable to comprehend the motives that led me to take such a course.

My eyes were not blinded.