All that she had heard of Cadurcis, all the information she
had within these few days so rapidly acquired of his character and
conduct, were indeed not calculated to dispose her to witness the
renewal of their intimacy with feelings of remarkable satisfaction.
But this morning she had read his poem, the poem that all London was
talking of, and she had read it with horror. She looked upon Cadurcis
as a lost man. With her, indeed, since her marriage, an imaginative
mind had become an object of terror; but there were some peculiarities
in the tone of Cadurcis' genius, which magnified to excess her general
apprehension on this head. She traced, in every line, the evidences
of a raging vanity, which she was convinced must prompt its owner
to sacrifice, on all occasions, every feeling of duty to its
gratification. Amid all the fervour of rebellious passions, and the
violence of a wayward mind, a sentiment of profound egotism appeared
to her impressed on every page she perused. Great as might have been
the original errors of Herbert, awful as in her estimation were the
crimes to which they had led him, they might in the first instance be
traced rather to a perverted view of society than of himself. But self
was the idol of Cadurcis; self distorted into a phantom that seemed
to Lady Annabel pregnant not only with terrible crimes, but with the
basest and most humiliating vices.
Pages:
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387