I shuddered as I asked myself the question. Somewhere must be lurking a guilty creature, with a heart on fire from the flames of hell, with which it had put itself in contact. Then my heart stood still within me--all but the family had been banished from the apartment--her father was leading in Eleanor. With a slow step, clinging to his arm, she entered; but as her eyes fixed themselves upon the rigid outlines lying there beneath the funeral pall, she sprung forward, casting herself upon her lover's corpse. Before, she had been silent; now began a murmur of woe so heart-rending that we who listened wished ourselves deaf before our ears had heard tones and sentences which could never be forgotten. It would be useless for me, a man, with a man's language and thoughts, to attempt to repeat what this broken-hearted woman said to her dead lover. It was not her words so much as it was her pathetic tones. She talked to him as if he were alive and could hear her. She was resolved to make him hear and feel her love through the dark death which was between them. "Ah, Henry," she said, in a low, caressing tone, pressing back the curls from his forehead with her hand, "your hair is wet still. To think that you should lie out there all night--all night--on the ground, in the rain, and I not know of it! I, to be sleeping in my warm bed--actually sleeping, and you lying out in the storm, dead. That is the strangest thing! that makes me wonder--to think I _could_! Tell me that you forgive me for that, darling--for sleeping, you know, when you were out there. I was thinking of you when I took the rose out of my dress at night. I dreamed of you all night, but if I had known where you were, I would have gone out barefooted, I would have stayed by you and kept the rain from your face, from your dear, dear hair that I like so much and hardly ever dare to touch. It was cruel of me to sleep so. Would you guess, I was vexed at you last evening because you didn't come? It was that made me so gay--not because I was happy. Vexed at you for not coming, when you could not come because you were dead!" and she laughed. As that soft, dreadful laughter thrilled through the room, with a groan Mr. Argyll arose and went out; he could bear no more. Disturbed with a fear that her reason was shaken, I spoke with Mary, and we two tried to lift her up, and persuade her out of the room. "Oh, don't try to get me away from him again," she pleaded, with a quivering smile, which made us sick. "Don't be troubled, Henry. I'm _not_ going--I'm _not_! They are going to put my hand in yours and bury me with you. It's so curious I should have been playing the piano and wearing my new dress, and never guessing it! that you were so near me--dead--murdered!"