“Heed her not,” said Henry; “she means not you.” “Oh, no—no!” she cried. “Farewell, Charles—dear Charles.” “Oh, say that word again!” he exclaimed, with animation. “It is the first time such music has met my ears.” “It must be the last.” “No, no—oh, no.” “For your own sake I shall be able now, Charles, to show you that I really loved you.” “Not by casting me from you?” “Yes, even so. That will be the way to show you that I love you.” She held up her hands wildly, as she added, in an excited voice,— “The curse of destiny is upon me! I am singled out as one lost and accursed. Oh, horror—horror! would that I were dead!” Charles staggered back a pace or two until he came to the table, at which he clutched for support. He turned very pale as he said, in a faint voice,— “Is—is she mad, or am I?” “Tell him I am mad, Henry,” cried Flora. “Do not, oh, do not make his lonely thoughts terrible with more than that. Tell him I am mad.” “Come with me,” whispered Henry to Holland. “I pray you come with me at once, and you shall know all.” “I—will.” “George, stay with Flora for a time. Come, come, Mr. Holland, you ought, and you shall know all; then you can come to a judgment for yourself. This way, sir. You cannot, in the wildest freak of your imagination, guess that which I have now to tell you.” Never was mortal man so utterly bewildered by the events of the last hour of his existence as was now Charles Holland, and truly he might well be so. He had arrived in England, and made what speed he could to the house of a family whom he admired for their intelligence, their high culture, and in one member of which his whole thoughts of domestic happiness in this world were centered, and he found nothing but confusion, incoherence, mystery, and the wildest dismay. Well might he doubt if he were sleeping or waking—well might he ask if he or they were mad. And now, as, after a long, lingering look of affection upon the pale, suffering face of Flora, he followed Henry from the room, his thoughts were busy in fancying a thousand vague and wild imaginations with respect to the communication which was promised to be made to him. But, as Henry had truly said to him, not in the wildest freak of his imagination could he conceive of any thing near the terrible strangeness and horror of that which he had to tell him, and consequently he found himself closeted with Henry in a small private room, removed from the domestic part of the hall, to the full in as bewildered a state as he had been from the first. CHAPTER XI. THE COMMUNICATIONS TO THE LOVER.—THE HEART’S DESPAIR.