"No, oh, no; you have done well--you have done right, and you shall have your reward. But, Heavens! to think of her lying there in her living beauty among the skeletons and the worms--perhaps even now she is waking amid those gloomy shades! Ugh!" he shuddered, and started from the chair. "No danger, I think," said the dark physician, smiling contemptuously; "I observed her closely this evening, and there were no signs of reviving. Patience, my friend, I bribed the old sexton, I have the key to the vault. In a few hours it will be night, and then we will bear away your drooping Lily to revive beneath the sunshine of your love." "But where can we take her? If the theft is discovered there will be a hue and cry raised about the body." "I know of a safe place. You remember the old couple in the suburbs? the same who kept poor Fanny till her ravings ended in her death?" "Oh, God! do not remind me of such horrible things--let the dead past lie! Yes, I remember!" "We will take her _there_. I have been to see them, and prepared them for our coming. You will have to pay heavily, of course, but you will not mind that in such a cause. Now, then, will you go with me to the graveyard to-night?" "I will, and may the devil, who certainly helps you in your evil deeds, doctor, aid us both in this precarious scheme, and restore my living love to my devoted arms!" "Amen!" breathed Doctor Pratt piously. CHAPTER III. It was the day following the funeral of sweet Lily Lawrence--a sunny day, fragrant and bloomy with the wealth of summer. Outside of Mr. Lawrence's stately mansion in the handsome grounds enclosing it, flowers blossomed, the fountain threw up its diamond spray, and birds twittered and chirped. But within the house all was silence and gloom. Mr. Lawrence was shut up in the library alone with his grief; Ada Lawrence lay ill of a low, nervous fever, induced by her poignant sorrow, and Mrs. Vance sat in the drawing-room alone, nervous and ill, and starting at every trivial sound. The stately-looking widow was very handsome this morning. She wore a dress of thin black grenadine, relieved by creamy old lace at throat and wrists, and delicate ribbons of heliotrope color. Her wavy black hair was braided about her small head like a coronet, and a cluster of heliotrope blossoms nestled in its silken darkness. A faint roseate bloom tinted her lips and cheeks, and hightened by contrast the restless brightness of her full, dark eyes, and the whiteness of her low brow. She was fully thirty-five years old, but nature and art had combined so gracefully in her make-up that she did not appear twenty-five. A sudden peal of the door-bell made her spring up suddenly in nervous terror of she scarce knew what. She had hardly reseated herself when an obsequious servant ushered in a tall, exceedingly distinguished-looking young man. It was Lancelot Darling, the betrothed lover of the dead girl.