“Julia! Julia!” he at length said. Then burying his face in both his hands, against the arm of a sofa on which he flung himself, he added: “we are alone?” After a considerable pause he looked up; Julia, to hide the confusion occasioned by so strange an address, was stooping to caress a dog of Fitz-Ullin’s, which, since its first entrance, had been importuning for notice. Our hero, with a bitter smile, arose and walked towards a window. “Surely” he murmured to himself, “I need not wish—I need not desire—yet—nothing—nothing short of infatuation could extenuate—” The entrance of Lord L⸺, followed shortly by Frances, and soon after by Lady Oswald, who was now on a visit at Lodore, put an end to this strange interview. The dreadful occurrence of the murder was fresh in the minds of all. The subject was entered upon immediately: they spoke of how severely Mrs. Montgomery had felt the shock. Particulars were minutely enquired into by Lord L⸺, and many comments made by each in turn. Julia, indeed, said the least; for she found that, whenever she spoke, Fitz-Ullin watched every word that fell from her lips, with a kind of attention which was distressing, as well as embarrassing, and she shortly therefore quitted the room. Frances, who had done so before, now returned with a message from her grandmamma, requesting that Fitz-Ullin would go to her, as she was unable to leave her own apartment. On obeying the summons he had received, Fitz-Ullin found his kind old friend sitting up in her bed, and Mr. Jackson and Julia with her, endeavouring to compose her spirits. She was greatly affected on seeing Fitz-Ullin, and shed tears, which she had not before done; for there was, she said, a horror mingled with her sorrow for Henry, which would not suffer her to weep. She feared that he had died without a just sense of religion. Fitz-Ullin said, with some hesitation, that he had latterly possessed much of Henry’s confidence, and that he had reason to believe that he had fixed his hopes of happiness, (in this life at least,) where no ungentle feeling could find a place—where, indeed, scarcely a temptation to err could have reached him, and where the purest Christian principles would have been daily cultivated by the hand of domestic affection; and that such ties, he should hope, no man would voluntarily seek while he continued to be the sport of unfixed opinions, or the slave of irregular habits. Julia and Fitz-Ullin left Mrs. Montgomery’s room together. As soon as he had closed the door, he stopped short, took one of her hands in both of his, and looked full in her face with an expression of tender, or rather kindly enquiry, for there was no presumption in his manner. He pronounced her name, then paused. She met his scrutinizing gaze with a countenance, first of surprise, and, finally, displeasure, withdrew her hand, and, without speaking, preceded him to the drawing-room. CHAPTER XLI.