"Forgive! dear Willoughby! surely I have all that is kind and noble in intention to thank you for, nothing to forgive--unless indeed," and he paused in silent alarm. "Oh, Willoughby," he added, gazing at the working of his countenance, "I fear--I fear some terrible purpose! speak to me! tell me I am wrong--you have no such thought--no you would not--you press my hand, what does that mean? Speak, Willoughby! Is it to reassure me?--oh, my poor mother--think of her!--think of me, how much, how truly I love you, never should I know happiness again, if--oh misery--those eyes--he does not know me!" Willoughby attempted to speak; the words were not only indistinctly uttered, but evidently without purpose in their arrangement; while unable longer to maintain the struggle against bodily suffering, with the wildness of delirium in his looks and gestures, he sank on a sofa writhing in agonies which partook of the nature of convulsions. The now terrified Alfred, calling aloud for help, hastily loosed his brother's stock and undid the buttons of his waistcoat; within which, while so employed, his eye was unavoidably drawn from its close connexion with the frightful circumstances of the moment, by a piece of crushed paper, on which the word "_Poison_," in the conspicuous characters already described, was nevertheless strikingly visible. Alfred snatched up this fatal witness; it was a part of what he had seen in the morning, and had but too evidently been thrust into the bosom as a place of concealment after its contents had been emptied into the goblet; nay, it had still a considerable portion of the powder lurking in its folds. The terrible conviction that his precaution had been too late, and that his brother had assuredly swallowed the _poison_, flashed at once upon Alfred, fearfully strengthened by the appearance of Willoughby laying on the sofa, his eyeballs rolling beneath their closed lids, except when they started wildly open for a second and closed again. He still attempted to speak, but now nearly without the power of articulation, saving that the name of Alfred was more than once distinguishable amid a low rapid murmur, which however soon faded into whispers, then subsided into a mere movement of the lips without sound, and then ceased altogether. By this time the poor sufferer had become quite insensible, and no one had yet answered Alfred's continued calls for help. He now ran to the bell, then to the door, giving orders to the servants, who at length appeared, to fly for the nearest medical aid, adding incoherent directions about bringing antidotes for _poison_, and even naming arsenic in particular; yet at the same moment, without any direct consciousness of what he was doing, his fingers with a sort of instinctive movement were thrusting within the breast of his own waistcoat, the fatal scrap of paper he had found in his brother's bosom; for all the while that with the aid of servants he was vainly