Her mind was obviously impressed by the last words which her son had uttered.--“Did you hear him, Richard,” she exclaimed, in accents terribly loud, considering the exhausted state of her strength--“Did you hear the words? It was Heaven speaking our condemnation by the voice of our own child. But do not fear, my Richard, do not weep! I will answer the thunder of Heaven with its own music.” She flew to a harpsichord which stood in the room, and, while the servant and master gazed on each other, as if doubting whether her senses were about to leave her entirely, she wandered over the keys, producing a wilderness of harmony, composed of passages recalled by memory, or combined by her own musical talent, until at length her voice and instrument united in one of those magnificent hymns in which her youth had praised her Maker, with voice and harp, like the Royal Hebrew who composed it. The tear ebbed insensibly from the eyes which she turned upwards--her vocal tones, combining with those of the instrument, rose to a pitch of brilliancy seldom attained by the most distinguished performers, and then sunk into a dying cadence, which fell, never again to rise,--for the songstress had died with her strain. The horror of the distracted husband may be conceived, when all efforts to restore life proved totally ineffectual. Servants were despatched for medical men--Hartley, and every other who could be found. The General precipitated himself into the apartment they had so lately left, and in his haste ran, against Middlemas, who, at the sound of the music from the adjoining apartment, had naturally approached nearer to the door, and surprised and startled by the sort of clamour, hasty steps, and confused voices which ensued, had remained standing there, endeavouring to ascertain the cause of so much disorder. The sight of the unfortunate young man wakened the General's stormy passions to frenzy. He seemed to recognise his son only as the cause of his wife's death. He seized him by the collar, and shook him violently as he dragged him into the chamber of mortality. “Come hither,” he said, “thou for whom a life of lowest obscurity was too mean a fate--come hither, and look on the parents whom thou hast so much envied--whom thou hast so often cursed. Look at that pale emaciated form, a figure of wax, rather than flesh and blood--that is thy mother--that is the unhappy Zilia Moncada, to whom thy birth was the source of shame and misery, and to whom thy ill-omened presence has now brought death itself. And behold me”--he pushed the lad from him, and stood up erect, looking wellnigh in gesture and figure the apostate spirit he described--“Behold me,” he said; “see you not my hair streaming with sulphur, my brow scathed with lightning? I am the Arch-Fiend--I am the father whom you seek--I am the accursed Richard Tresham, the seducer of Zilia, and the father of her murderer!”