"Oh, yes, yes; I see it all!--that frown--that look! Oh, thou, thou, wert that horrible spectre!"
Having thus replied, poor Adelaide, with a piteous, heart-rending scream, and to all appearance as if life had fled, sunk down, pale and ghastly as a corse, upon her pillow. It was indeed some time before Sir David could bring her to herself. When the hapless Adelaide recovered from her faint, he said: "My reproaches now are at an end. For you now are the object of my compassion and of my pity, not of my wrath. It is however true, that although infernal agents have given you a husband, yet know they have not the power to cause me to remain with you one hour more!--There I am a free agent. No, no!--not Lucifer himself shall detain me here!--no, nor all thy witchery! Within a short hour, or less, I depart from hence, and never, never more to return; and I shall be no more seen!"
With a desperate grasp, then stooping, he seized and held up the fatal dagger, the deadly record of his grief--the _sævi monumentum doloris_--the bloody pledge of his crime--the avengeful instrument of his rage, stamped with the crimsoned tears of unabated and unabatable grief!... "Yet before I go, look, lady, upon that dagger!--whose blood, think you, it is with which it is imbued?--You shall hear!... That once was noble blood--it was valiant blood--the proudest blood of Caledon--the blood of her royal race of kings! And, oh, wretch that I am!--it was the blood of my brother--my only brother!--yea, and my elder born! rashly, madly, wickedly shed by me!--yes!... Oh, still gaze upon it--turn not thine eyes away. It was blood nearly, deeply, none nearer, allied to me, and beloved. But, but this--all this was forgot in the moment of delirium--of madness! It was the blood of my elder brother--yea, an only brother!... Oh, Adelaide, look not thus again!--my weary, sickening heart, condemns me enough---- enough. Well, well, we lived in the same home, we partook of the same board, we slept in the same bed.... Oh, oh my brain, how it maddens! and my heart would fain burst!... Yet, yet, yet I slew him--in rage, madness, I did!--I did, I did--monster that I am!... Lady, behold I weep!--Ah, I did not weep when my poor brother died!--and when this I plunged into his beloved breast!--No, no, no! But it is just, it is truly just, that heaven's vengeance should make this base instrument of my crime, this fratricidal dagger, the fatal cause which now separates me from all happiness upon earth; and divorces me, body and soul, from thee--oh, whom I loved better--yea, beyond life itself! But time advances, and I must depart from hence--oh, and for ever! One parting look, and then I am gone. Oh, thou precious mischief!--so young, so fascinating, so beautiful! Oh, my very heart shall burst!... Yet, yet--oh, must it be!--and must we part?... Lady, from hence I go, and shall be no more seen; peradventure too no more be remembered. Well, well, let justice have its vengeance and its victim too! Yes, yes, let it be so."