containing the mysterious closet, but not the key of the closet itself. Of this latter circumstance she was glad; inasmuch as she conceived that he had adopted her counsel to carry it invariably secured about his person, so that no prying domestics might use it in his absence. Returning, therefore, with the one key which she had found, she entered the apartment where her father had breathed his last. Unchanged was its appearance, in mournfulness and gloom unchanged, in arrangements and features precisely the same as when she last was there, on the night when she intercepted the banditti in their predatory visit. She drew aside the hangings of the bed, a cloud of dust flew out--and for a few moments she stood gazing on the couch where the dark spirit of her sire had fled from its mortal tenement! And as she still lingered near the bed, the remembrance of the death-scene came so vividly back to her mind, that for an instant she fancied she beheld the cold, stern, relentless countenance of the late Count of Riverola upon the pillow; and she turned away more in loathing and abhorrence than alarm, for through her brain flashed in dread association with his memory, the awful words--"And as the merciless scalpel hacked and hewed away at the still almost palpitating flesh of the murdered man, in whose breast the dagger remained deeply buried--a ferocious joy--a savage, hyena-like triumph filled my soul; and I experienced no remorse for the deed I had done!" Yes, she turned aside, and was advancing rapidly toward the mysterious closet, when--holy God!--was it reality or imagination? Was it a human being or a specter from another world? For a tall, dark form, muffled apparently in a long cowl--or it might be a cloak, but Nisida was too bewildered to discriminate aright--glided from the middle of the room where her eyes first beheld it, and was lost to view almost as soon as seen. Strong minded as Nisida was, indomitable as was her courage, and far away as she was from being superstitious, yet now she staggered, reeled, and would have fallen had she not come in contact with the mysterious closet, against which she leaned for support. She gasped for breath, and her eyes were fixed wildly upon the door by which the figures had disappeared. Nevertheless, she had so far retained her presence of mind as to grasp the lamp firmly in her hand, for at that moment, after such a fright, in the room where her father had died, and in the close vicinity of the fearful cabinet, even Nisida would have fainted with terror to be left in darkness. "'Twas imagination--naught save imagination," she thought within herself, as she exerted all her power to surmount the alarms that had seized upon her. "But no! I remember to have closed the door carefully behind me, and now it is open!"