Death! No; I dared not die! I was afraid to die: but I would seek a living grave. I would fly from the face of those who loved, and of those who hated me. Edward had forbidden my name to be uttered before him. Never again should it be uttered as the name of a living creature. I would take another, and bury myself in a seclusion where I might linger through the increasing symptoms of that illness which, during the last few days, I had detected and recognised by the hectic spots on my cheeks, by a racking cough, and nightly sweats. There I should live alone, suffer alone, and die alone; and when the record of my death, if recorded at all, should casually meet the eyes of those who once loved me, it would pass unnoticed; and my own name, my fatal name, if ever pronounced by them, would sound as the knell of blighted joys--of hopes gone by--as the memory of a mysterious shame, and of a nameless sorrow. My eyes turned accidentally to a painting of the Cathedral at --, which hung over the chimney-piece in my room. A superstitious and nervous fancy took possession of me. I felt as if my fate directed me there. I turned my eyes away, and tried to _think_, but could not. A vague terror pursued me; and still, as I fixed my eyes on this picture, I felt as if _there_, among those solemn arches, in those dim aisles, I should be _safe_. I felt as if a mountain would be removed from my breast as soon as I had reached a place where my name and my fate were unknown. _There_, Henry would not pursue me; _there_, I should never be told that Alice was dead, and that I had destroyed her; _there_, I should never hear that Mrs. Middleton had learnt to hate me; there, she would never ask me what I had done with her child; and miles and miles would lie between me and _him_, whom I so hopelessly loved, and so wildly feared. The hours went by, and each time the clock struck I startled with affright; but I grew calmer as the night advanced; I had something to do, for my strange vague fancy was changed into a settled resolve. I fetched a small portmanteau, and put into it some linen and some money, Edward's miniature, and a small prayer-book, which he had once given to me. My cough was dreadful, and shook me to pieces; but I listened to its hollow sound with a terrible joy; and as I counted the bank-notes in my pocket-book, I wrote with a pencil on the back of the last--"For my burial."