Immense tapers of an enormous thickness lighted the sombre walls, hung with black cloth; whilst chorister boys walked up and down chanting hymns in honour of the deceased, and flinging incense in the air from silver vessels suspended by silver chains, which they carried in their hands; thus shedding fragrance around, and chasing the fearful odour of mortality even from the very chamber of death. Priests wrapped in funeral garments also slowly paraded the room, muttering prayers, and joining occasionally their full, deep-toned voices with the shriller chant of the boys. The space where the public were admitted, was railed off from the lower end of the hall; but near the body knelt a beautiful female arrayed in black velvet, and her fair face and arms shaded by a veil of black crape.-- "O Osiris!" cried a figure wrapped in a long dark cloak, grasping the arm of Father Morris, "who is that lovely creature? There, bending over the last awful relics of mortality, methinks she looks beauteous as the phœnix rising from the funeral pile, and triumphing in glory over the impotent malice of the grave." "Hush! hush! for Heaven's sake!" whispered the deep, full voice of Father Morris; "it is Elvira, the rival of Rosabella, whom you have sworn to support." "Typhon himself could not injure her," said Cheops, for it was he; and he stood with his eyes fixed upon her, apparently lost in meditation. "For mercy's sake, let us go on!" whispered the priest, "you will excite attention--we shall be discovered. Besides," continued he in a lower tone, "did you find a crown so delightful that you think you would injure her by depriving her of one?" "No! by the holy limbs of Osiris!" said Cheops; and, obeying the influence of the friar's arm, he moved onwards. "Why was not Rosabella with Elvira in the hall?" asked Sir Ambrose. "I thought it was commanded by the law that all the princesses of the Blood Royal should exhibit themselves publicly as mourners by the corpse of the deceased Queen." "Rosabella is ill," replied the duke. "Grief for the loss of her cousin has produced an access of fever, and she is unable to quit her bed." "Indeed!" returned Sir Ambrose, incredulously; "it is very strange! I own I did not give Rosabella credit for so much sensibility." Notwithstanding the incredulity of Sir Ambrose, however, Rosabella was really dangerously ill; though her illness did not proceed exactly from the cause she chose to assign for it. The terror she had felt at the sudden appearance of the Mummy, whom she thought a supernatural being, at the very moment she believed the death of her cousin was darkly hinted at by the monk, operating upon an over-excited imagination, had produced fever; and for some days Rosabella was in considerable danger.