As she spoke, she cast back the cloth; and lying on the table, which was covered with crimson velvet, appeared a pale and gory human head, severed at the neck. The face was turned up, the eyes were closed, the mouth was partly open, and the fine white teeth were shown. Though pale as ashes, the traces of great beauty remained in the finely-chiselled features: the curling lip, covered with the dark moustache; the wide, expansive brow, the high forehead, the blue tinge of the eyes shining through the dark-fringed lids--all showed that in life it must have been the face of as handsome a man as ever had been seen, but over all was the grey shade of death. Annie Walton started back in terror; but Lady Margaret turned to her sternly and sadly, saying, "Foolish girl! it is but wax. For you it has none of those memories that give it life for me. There--you have seen enough!" and she drew the cloth back again over that sad memento. Then, gazing for a moment again at the picture, the old lady set the lamp down upon the table; and casting her arms round the fair neck of Arrah Neil, she leaned her eyes upon her shoulder and wept bitterly. Annie Walton would not intrude upon her aunt's grief, either by asking any questions or by calling to her remembrance the situation of the Earl of Beverley, although, as soon as the first impression of the extraordinary spectacle which had been presented to her had passed away, the state in which her lover had been so long kept naturally occurred to her mind. But Lady Margaret, herself a woman of strong and vigorous character, though somewhat eccentric in her habits of thought, soon roused herself, and starting up she wiped the tears from her eyes, exclaiming, "This is not all folly, my child; but yet any grief, if it prevent us from doing our duty, is a weakness and a wrong. Come, we will soon find the earl." Miss Walton took up the basket; and Lady Margaret, with the light, approached a door on the other side of the room which led to a narrow and very steep staircase; but Arrah Neil paused till the light was nearly gone, to gaze at the picture, and when she at length followed, her eyes too were running over with bright drops. A long passage at the top of the stairs conducted them to a door, which Lady Margaret gently opened, exposing a room within, furnished with a chair, a bed, and a small table, by which the earl was sitting, his head resting on his hand.