The works of Edgar Allan Poe; newly collected and edited, with a memoir, critical introductions, and notes, by Edmund Clarence Stedman and George Edward Woodberry; the illustrations by Albert Edward Sterner.

TALES OF CONSCIENCE

a burning hope, and at length nurtured in my secret
thoughts a stern and desperate resolution that I would
submit no longer to be enslaved.
It was at Rome, during the Carnival of i8-, that I
attended a masquerade in the palazzo of the Neapolitan Duke Di Broglio. I had indulged more freely
than usual in the excesses of the wine-table; and now
the suffocating atmosphere of the crowded rooms irritated me beyond endurance. The difficulty, too, of
forcing my way through the mazes of the company
contributed not a little to the ruffling of my temper;
for I was anxiously seeking (let me not say with what
unworthy motive) the young, the gay, the beautiful
wife of the aged and doting Di Broglio. With a too
unscrupulous confidence she had previously communicated to me the secret of the costume in which she
would be habited, and now, having caught a glimpse
of her person, I was hurrying to make my way into
her presence. At this moment I felt a light hand
placed upon my shoulder, and that ever-remembered,
low, damnable whisper within my ear.
In an absolute frenzy of wrath, I turned at once
upon him who had thus interrupted me, and seized
him violently by the collar. He was attired, as I had
expected, in a costume altogether similar to my own;
wearing a Spanish cloak of blue velvet, begirt about
the waist with a crimson belt sustaining a rapier. A
mask of black silk entirely covered his face.
" Scoundrel!" I said, in a voice husky with rage,
while every syllable I uttered seemed as new fuel to
my fury; "scoundrel! impostor! accursed villain!
you shall not -you shall not dog me unto death!
Follow me, or I stab you where you stand! "- and
I broke my way from the ball-room into a small ante
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