Mrs. St. John was not in the saloon when Falkland entered. Lady Margaret was reading the well-known story of Lady T----- and the Duchess of ---, in which an agreement had been made and kept, that the one who died first should return once more to the survivor. As Lady Margaret spoke laughingly of the anecdote, Emily, who was watching Falkland's countenance, was struck with the dark and sudden shade which fell over it. He moved in silence towards the window where Emily was sitting. "Do you believe," she said, with a faint smile, "in the possibility of such an event?" "I believe--though I reject--nothing!" replied Falkland, "but I would give worlds for such a proof that death does not destroy." "Surely," said Emily, "you do not deny that evidence of our immortality which we gather from the Scriptures?--are they not all that a voice from the dead could be?" Falkland was silent for a few moments: he did not seem to hear the question; his eyes dwelt upon vacancy; and when he at last spoke, it was rather in commune with himself than in answer to her. "I have watched," said he, in a low internal tone, "over the tomb: I have called, in the agony of my heart, unto her--who slept beneath; I would have dissolved my very soul into a spell, could it have summoned before me for one, one moment the being who had once been the spirit of my life! I have been, as it were, entranced with the intensity of my own adjuration; I have gazed upon the empty air, and worked upon my mind to fill it with imaginings; I have called aloud unto the winds and tasked my soul to waken their silence to reply. All was a waste--a stillness--an infinity--without a wanderer or a voice! The dead answered me not, when I invoked them; and in the vigils of the still night I looked from the rank grass and the mouldering stones to the Eternal Heavens, as man looks from decay to immortality! Oh! that awful magnificence of repose--that living sleep--that breathing yet unrevealing divinity, spread over those still worlds! To them also I poured my thoughts--but in a whisper. I did not dare to breathe aloud the unhallowed anguish of my mind to the majesty of the unsympathising stars! In the vast order of creation--in the midst of the stupendous system of universal life, my doubt and inquiry were murmured forth--a voice crying in the wilderness and returning without an echo unanswered unto myself!"