It was some moments before Albert could bring himself to believe that his father was no more; and then, with a frantic burst of grief, he called around him the persons of the house, who with gentle violence took him from the chamber of death, and strove to soothe his deep grief with such topics of consolation as suggested themselves to them. But poor Albert heard nothing of their sympathy. His grief was overwhelming; and it was many hours before his deep agony subsided into tears, and the last words of his father came like balm to his wounded spirit. Then his grief assumed a more calm and melancholy aspect. He shed no more tears; but there was a weight at his heart which even the bright and strangely earnest prophecies of his father, concerning his happiness with Ada, could not remove. Time alone, in such cases, heals the deep and agonising grief which ensues in a fond and truthful heart, after such a disseverment of a tie which, while it exists, we cannot imagine can ever be broken. CHAPTER XLVII. The Smith at Learmont House.—The Breakfast.—The Threat, and its Results.—The Caution. While these events were taking place, Learmont was ill at ease in his stately halls. Well he knew that the visitation of the smith at so inopportune an hour at his fête would be related throughout that circle of nobility and power into which it was the grand end and aim of his life to force himself; and, it added one more damning argument to those already rapidly accumulating in his mind towards the conviction, that after all he had made a grand mistake in life, and mistaken the road to happiness. At the same time, however, he felt that having chosen the path of guilt he had, there was for him no retreat, and with a dogged perseverance, compounded of mortified ambition, he continued his career of guilt. Take the life of Britton he dared not, although he lay such an inanimate, helpless mass in his power, and it was not the least of Learmont’s annoyances that he was compelled to see to the personal safety of the drunken brute who had produced confusion and derangement among his most ambitious schemes. It was many hours before Britton slept off the intoxication under the influence of which he had acted in the manner described in the ball-room, and when he did recover, and open his heavy eyes, it was with no small degree of surprise that he found himself in the same dark room into which the squire had thrown him to sleep off his debauch. His first thought was that he was in prison, and he rose to his feet with bitter imprecations and awful curses upon the head of Learmont and Gray, whom he supposed must have betrayed him in some way. A second thought, however, dispelled this delusion. “No—no; d—n them—no!” he cried. “They dare not! Well they know they dare not!—I have them safe!—My evidence would destroy them, while it would not place me in a worse position. Where the devil am I?”