we had not long resumed our drive , when the general began to talk , with his usual soldierly directness , of the bereavement , as he termed it , which he had sustained in the death of his beloved niece and ward ; and he then broke out in a tone of intense bitterness and fury , inveighing against the `` hellish arts '' to which she had fallen a victim , and expressing , with more exasperation than piety , his wonder that heaven should tolerate so monstrous an indulgence of the lusts and malignity of hell .