They lifted her up, and laid her on a sofa—her limbs hanging helplessly, like those of a dead or swooning girl. But she was neither dead nor swooning. Wherever they moved her, her eyes were still fixed, in that bright, burning, horrible stare, upon the distance, as though the vision of the ghastly spectacle that had been conjured up before her imagination, followed her wherever she was turned. They took her up stairs, undressed and put her to bed. All night long she lay in the same state. In the morning there was no change, except that the muscles of the face had fallen, the cheeks sunken, the chin dropped, and that concentrated, intense gaze into vacancy, was more burning bright than ever. It was as though a burning soul was consuming the unconscious flesh to death. Or as if a body were turning to dust and ashes with the spirit still imprisoned in it. “She is sinking, and must die, unless she can be moved to tears,” said the doctor. But what should move her to tears? Was there anything on earth that she could weep for now? Her old gray father had knelt, weeping, by her bedside, and torn his silver hair in anguish, without causing a single eyelash to quiver over that fixed, burning eye! What should make her weep? Plaintive music? She could not be made to hear it! The very songs that she and Frank had sung together? The sound was drowned in the groans from that scene of blood! Mrs. Clifton, of Hardbargain, had come over, but though she was a woman of great skill and experience, all her efforts failed to rouse the girl from that fearful trance, which seemed likely to end in death. “Send for Catherine! If any one in the world can do her good now, it will be Catherine. There is, besides, a Free-Masonry between girls of the same age, that makes them instinctively understand each other. If a child were in a stupor, I should certainly send its favorite playmate—another child—as the most likely being to rouse it,” said Mrs. Clifton. “Ah! My Lord!—this is worse than any stupor! I wish to Heaven she would fall into a stupor,” replied the father. “I know it! For her mind is not dulled, but seems wrought up to the highest pitch, and intent upon some imaginary vision of horror. She must be brought out of it. She must be subdued. Send for Catherine.” Mr. Clifton went himself in the gig, to bring the kind girl. When Catherine arrived, and while she stood by the side of the stricken, insensible girl, Mr. Clifton said to her— “You see, my dear child Zuleime seems to have been very much attached to this poor young man. And the news of his horrid death was broken to her suddenly, and it has just thrown her into this state! Look at her eyes! What do you think they see—in imagination, I mean?” “They see that scene of massacre—they see the death of her lover,” said Kate, looking piteously at her friend—(for Zuleime _was_ her friend)—and brooding deeply over some idea.