“Farewell--dear love--farewell. Nor seek to follow me. Thou dead, who is there left in all the world to love or think of me? As thou dost love me, live for me--weep for me--guard my grave! Our happiness was but a phantom. I knew ’twould vanish. Farewell--farewell!” And still with his hand upon his side, his head fell upon her breast, and he spoke no more. There, on that spot, there were but two living human beings. The young bride mutely clasping her dead husband in her arms; and the remorseless noble standing over her unpityingly--unforgivingly--and glorying in his terrible revenge! MARTHA. (FLOTOW.) CHAPTER I. The Lady Henrietta--no, I will not divulge her surname--the Lady Henrietta was ennuyed and bored--though she lived in the sixteenth century. Furthermore, the honest fact is, that being bored, Henrietta was far from agreeable, as two persons knew, to wit, Nancy, her ladyship’s sharp waiting maid, and Lord Tristram, who was old and a fool. A fool decidedly--for courting a young and handsome woman. Hence, by inference, you see that the Lady Henrietta was young and handsome. Yes, young, handsome, rich, noble, healthy, and miserable! She could not tell anybody why she was miserable, but on one particular day, when her ladyship was rather more miserable than usual, within her castle at Richmond; at Richmond statute fair some hundred yards off, not a single lassie offering herself out for hire, on the dismal conditions of that day, but was happier than my Lady Henrietta. On that particular morning she was sitting snappishly at her toilette--though, indeed, she was naturally good-tempered; but aristocracy _has_ its miseries, or where _would_ the balance of things be?--when Lord Tristam arrived. One might have solemnly declared, without seeing my lord’s face, that my lord had been tripped up by youth and had never overtaken that early visitor. The way in which the fair Henrietta treated him was a satire upon man’s supremacy--indeed, this lord of Cosmos was a supreme fool. The old youngster coming in, she told him to kneel. He did. She told him to get up. He did. She bade him shut the window. Click went the latch. Immediately he heard the command to open it again. Then and there he did it, and was rewarded by the sight of a pair of scornful shoulders.