“It was night when we moved to the house. I had placed within the room where she used to sleep, all the furniture and books, with which it appeared, from my inquiries, to have been formerly filled. We laid her in the bed that had held that faded and altered form, in its freshest and purest years. I shrouded myself in one corner of the room, and counted the dull minutes till the daylight dawned. I pass over the detail of my recital--the experiment partially succeeded--would to God that it had not! would that she had gone down to her grave with her dreadful secret unrevealed! would--but--” Here Glanville’s voice failed him, and there was a brief silence before he recommenced. “Gertrude now had many lucid intervals; but these my presence were always sufficient to change into a delirious raving, even more incoherent than her insanity had ever yet been. She would fly from me with the most fearful cries, bury her face in her hands, and seem like one oppressed and haunted by a supernatural visitation, as long as I remained in the room; the moment I left her, she began, though slowly, to recover. “This was to me the bitterest affliction of all--to be forbidden to nurse, to cherish, to tend her, was like taking from me my last hope! But little can the thoughtless or the worldly dream of the depths of a real love; I used to wait all day by her door, and it was luxury enough to me to catch her accents or hear her move, or sigh, or even weep; and all night, when she could not know of my presence, I used to lie down by her bedside; and when I sank into a short and convulsed sleep, I saw her once more, in my brief and fleeting dreams, in all the devoted love, and glowing beauty, which had once constituted the whole of my happiness, and my world. “One day I had been called from my post by her door. They came to me hastily--she was in strong convulsions. I flew up stairs, and supported her in my arms till the fits had ceased: we then placed her in bed; she never rose from it again; but on that bed of death, the words, as well as the cause, of her former insanity, were explained--the mystery was unravelled. “It was a still and breathless night. The moon, which was at its decrease, came through the half-closed shutters, and beneath its solemn and eternal light, she yielded to my entreaties, and revealed all. The man--my friend--Tyrrell--had polluted her ear with his addresses, and when forbidden the house, had bribed the woman I had left with her, to convey his letters--she was discharged--but Tyrrell was no ordinary villain; he entered the house one evening, when no one but Gertrude was there--Come near me, Pelham--nearer--bend down your ear--he used force, violence! That night Gertrude’s senses deserted her--you know the rest.