The door of the lighted room--Leoline's room--lay wide open, and he paused on the threshold to reconnoitre. He had gone softly for fear of startling her, and now, with the same tender caution, he glanced round the room. The lamp burned on the dainty dressing table, where undisturbed lay jewels, perfume bottles and other knickknacks. The cithern lay unmolested on the couch, the rich curtains were drawn; everything was as he had left it last--everything, but the pretty pink figure, with drooping eyes, and pearls in the waves of her rich, black hair. He looked round for the things she had worn, hoping she had taken them off and retired to rest, but they were not to be seen; and with a cold sinking of the heart, he went noiselessly across the room, and to the bed. It was empty, and showed no trace of having been otherwise since he and the pest-cart driver had borne from it the apparently lifeless form of Leoline. Yes, she was gone; and Sir Norman turned for a moment so sick with utter dread, that he leaned against one of the tall carved posts, and hated himself for having left her with a heartlessness that his worst enemy could not have surpassed. Then aroused into new and spasmodic energy by the exigency of the case, he seized the lamp, and going out to the hall, made the house ring from basement to attic with her name. No reply, but that hollow, melancholy echo that sounds so lugubriously through empty houses, was returned; and he jumped down stairs with an impetuous rush, flinging back every door in the hall below with a crash, and flying wildly from room to room. In solemn grim repose they lay; but none of them held the bright figure in rose-satin he sought. And he left them in despair, and went back to her chamber again. “Leoline! Leoline! Leoline!” he called, while he rushed impetuously up stairs, and down stairs, and in my lady's chamber; but Leoline answered not--perhaps never would answer more! Even “hoping against hope,” he had to give up the chase at last--no Leoline did that house hold; and with this conviction despairingly impressed on his mind, Sir Norman Kingsley covered his face with his hands, and uttered a dismal groan. Yet, forlorn as was the case, he groaned but once, “only that and nothing more;” there was no time for such small luxuries as groaning and tearing his hair, and boiling over with wrath and vengeance against the human race generally, and those two diabolical specimens of it, the Earl of Rochester and Count L'Estrange, particularly. He plunged head foremost down stairs, and out of the door. There he was impetuously brought up all standing; for somebody stood before it, gazing up at the gloomy front with as much earnestness as he had done himself, and against this individual he rushed recklessly with a shock that nearly sent the pair of them over into the street.