The elder M. had loved the venerable Prince as a brother and a friend: the younger as a father. In their common regret for the object of their mutual affection, heightened by that sadly affecting scene they had just witnessed, they lost for an interval a sense of that extraordinary and delicate situation in which they now stood related towards each other; they hung on either side in a mournful silence over the deceased object of their friendly affliction; while the concourse of poor peasants, whom the return of the Prince brought in joyful emotion to the castle, now crowded into the hall, uttering those vehement exclamations of sorrow and amazement so consonant to the impassioned energy of their national character. To still the violence of their emotions, the priest kneeling at the foot of the bier began a prayer for the soul of the deceased. All who were present knelt around him: all was awful, solemn, and still. At that moment Glorvina appeared; she had rushed from the arms of her attendants; her strength was resistless, for it was the energy of madness; her senses were fled. A dead silence ensued; for the emotion of the priest would not suffer him to proceed. Regardless of the prostrate throng, she glided up the hall to the bier, and gazing earnestly on her father, smiled sadly, and waved her hand; then kissing his cheek, she threw her veil over his face, and putting her finger on her lip, as if to impose silence, softly exclaimed, “Hush! he does not suffer now! he sleeps! it was I who lulled him to repose with the song his heart loves!” and then kneeling beside him, in a voice scarcely human, she breathed out a soul-rending air she had been accustomed to sing to her father from her earliest infancy. The silence of compassion, of horror, which breathed around, was alone interrupted by her song of grief, while no eye save hers was dry. Abruptly breaking off her plaintive strains, she drew the veil from her father’s face, and suddenly averting her gaze from his livid features, it wandered from the Earl of M. to his son; while with a piercing shriek she exclaimed, “Which of you murdered my father?” then looking tenderly on the younger M. (whose eyes not less wild than her own had followed her every motion,) she softly added, “It was not you, my love!” and with a loud convulsive laugh she fell lifeless into the priest’s arms, who was the first who had the presence of mind to think of removing the still lovely maniac. The rival father and his unhappy son withdrew at the same moment; and when the priest (having disposed of his unfortunate charge) returned to seek them, he found them both in the same apartment, but at a considerable distance from each other, both buried in silent emotion--both labouring under the violence of their respective feelings. The priest attempted some words expressive of consolation to the younger M. who seemed most the victim of uncontrollable affliction;