We expected the return of my father and brother in about three or four days from the time they had left home, as they would have nothing to detain them after they had obtained the interview they sought with the Earl Mansville, as they were fully aware that if they protracted their presence, it would excite our utmost alarm. The fourth and fifth day, however, elapsed, and still they remained absent. Our apprehensions began to be excited in the utmost degree, and all the fearful forebodings that had before haunted my mind, returned with redoubled force. In spite of all her efforts to appear to the contrary, the fears of my mother, were, if possible, more excited than my own, and conjecture was exhausted in vain, to endeavor to account for the procrastination of their return. Another day elapsed in this manner, and yet we heard nothing of them, and then, indeed, our terrors were aroused to an almost insupportable pitch, and we no longer sought to disguise from each other the real state of our feelings upon the agonizing subject. I expressed to my mother all those forebodings I had before indulged in, and she could not but admit the too great probability of them. Now did she join with me in deeply regretting that my father and brother had not yielded to my advice, or that she should have made one to urge the propriety of the course they had taken. What step to pursue we were at a loss to conceive. ‘I cannot wait in this horrible state of suspense any longer,’ my mother ejaculated, when the seventh day dawned, and we heard no tidings of them; ‘I’ll instantly take G—m, and learn at once the cause of this mysterious delay, and whether or not anything has happened to them. This dreadful state of doubt and suspicion is worse than the most terrible certainty.’ She had scarcely given utterance to these words when a knock was heard at the outer door, and a letter was presented to my mother, which she knew immediately to be in the hand-writing of her husband. Trembling violently with apprehension, she broke the seal, but had not read more than two lines when, with a piercing scream, she fell senseless to the floor. I flew to her, raised her in my arms, and then, taking up the fatal letter, began to read the contents. The commencement of it was enough to smite my heart with horror; and it is marvellous how, under such trying circumstances, I retained possession for an instant of my faculties. My unfortunate father and brother were in gaol, accused of murder—of the murder of my deceiver, the Earl Mansville!