‘I shall never behold him again,’ she sighed, and scalding tears chased each other down her pale cheeks; ‘alas! I am torn from them forever. Or, if we should be again destined to meet, under what circumstances may it not be? Myself, perhaps, dishonored—heart-broken; my poor father a raving maniac. Oh, Heavens! the picture that arises upon my imagination is too horrible for contemplation.’ She wrung her hands, and traversed her gloomy chamber with a trembling step. ‘To be beneath the same roof with a murderer, too,’ she added, ‘and that, too, a murderer of the blackest dye! Oh, God! have I not good reason to be distracted? That terrible night when I overheard the wretches conversing upon the monstrous crime of which they had been guilty—when I saw them inter the mangled body of the poor white-haired old man, their unfortunate victim, comes fresh upon my memory as if it had only been just enacted. My heart seems chilled to ice; oh, surely the misfortunes that have since attended me have been a curse upon me for not having given such information of the circumstance as might have led to the apprehension of the assassins. The unfortunate old man’s bones moulder in unhallowed ground, and his blood calls to Heaven for retribution.’ She trembled violently, and almost imagined that she heard a melancholy sigh breathed close to her ear. She staggered to a chair and leant upon it for support, fearing to look around her, lest she should encounter the ghastly and blood-stained face of the murdered man. All was profoundly still in the house, and the miscreants who inhabited it seemed to be locked in the arms of sleep. Sleep! how could wretches whose consciences were burthened with such a heavy weight of crime, sleep? The light in the lamp burnt dim, and imparted a still more gloomy appearance to the chamber; and the wind howled dismally without, increasing the horrors of that solemn hour. Inez seated herself by the side of her bed, and, after a pause, did once more venture to look around the room, but nothing but of an ordinary description met her observation. ‘What dreadful crimes may they not have perpetrated in this house! in this very chamber!’ She once more reflected, and again her terrors arose to a pitch almost insupportable. The light in her lamp, which had for some time only been faintly glimmering, now suddenly died away, and our heroine was left in utter darkness. How she longed for the morning, and that she had some female companion near her in that dismal place, if it was only the repulsive old woman; some one to whom she could speak; but silent and dreary was everything around her, it was like being confined in a tomb. She had kept the embers of the fire together as long as she could, but that had also become extinguished, and the room felt cold as it was dismal and cheerless.