For a long while after the Viscount ceased no word was uttered by either. The scene was at once a striking and a sad one. The prisoner had sunk back on his side, and, resting on his left elbow, gazed on the lovely being who knelt beside him with her hands clasped, and her eyes turned heavenwards. Her lips moved as though she were breathing a fervent petition for her brother. How marked was the contrast between the expression of those two!--vice had sullied the handsome features of one; virtue had lent a purer radiance to the sweet face of the other. How strange the contrast of their hearts!--one like the glacier, cold, dead, unmelting; the other like the warm sunbeam, which, alas! throws its brightness, but thaws not the icy mass it shines on. How different were their thoughts!--one was thinking with remorse on his wretched past life, without hope of a future; the other, whilst mourning over the falsehood which had worked such a ruin, was still ardent with hope that in due time her prayers would be answered; and as the mastless, rudderless vessel, tossed and well nigh wrecked on the tumultuous billows, can yet be refitted, and with a wise captain and pilot steer her way to the haven she was bound for, so would this erring man forget, in that plenitude of rest, peace, and happiness, the storms and tempests, shoals and rocks, of the voyages that had brought him thither. This silence might have lasted still longer had not the entrance of Giacomo broken it. "My lady," said he, "Milord wishes to see you; would you follow me?" The Countess rose. "Adieu, then, for the present, Edward; I shall pray for you, and you will show your love to me by thinking more calmly. I will come and see you again soon, and I hope in another place than this." She held her hand out with a mournful smile; the Viscount seized it and pressed it to his lips, his heart was too full to allow him to frame the word "adieu." The lady turned away; he watched her till the dark door shut her out from his view, then, sitting up, took the small phial from his breast, laid the letter on the bed beside him, drew the cork, and tossed it from him. "I have nothing more to live for since I have seen her; there is no spot on earth I could live at, and feel she was another's wife," thought the hapless man. "Farewell, Ellen! a long farewell." He then emptied the contents of the bottle over his throat: it was prussic acid, and with fearful rapidity did its fatal work! he felt the hand of death on him whilst he was even swallowing it, sank back, uttered a faint cry of distress, and ceased to live, in less than a minute after swallowing the dreadful draught! So died he, poor erring man! So died he who should have been a peer of England, and yet ended his life a prisoned brigand, a suicide! When the Earl sent for the Countess it was to inform her that he had procured the necessary pardon for his brother.