"
"I came to confess the truth. Your allusions are horrible and
strange. Perhaps I have but faint conceptions of the evils which
my infatuation has produced; but what remains I will perform. It
was MY VOICE that you heard! It was MY FACE that you saw!"
For a moment I doubted whether my remembrance of events were not
confused. How could he be at once stationed at my shoulder and
shut up in my closet? How could he stand near me and yet be
invisible? But if Carwin's were the thrilling voice and the fiery
image which I had heard and seen, then was he the prompter of my
brother, and the author of these dismal outrages.
Once more I averted my eyes and struggled for speech:--"Begone!
thou man of mischief! Remorseless and implacable miscreant,
begone!"
"I will obey," said he, in a disconsolate voice; "yet, wretch as I
am, am I unworthy to repair the evils that I have committed? I
came as a repentant criminal. It is you whom I have injured, and
at your bar am I willing to appear and confess and expiate my
crimes. I have deceived you; I have sported with your terrors; I
have plotted to destroy your reputation.
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