Old Haidee, as she was called, left the room with the empty bowl, and Lily lay still, looking about her with a vague dread creeping into her heart. Had she indeed died in that horrible vault, and was she now in another world inhabited by such hideous beings as the one who had just left her? She shuddered and closed her eyes. The sound of a footstep aroused her. A man was entering the room. It was Harold Colville. He came and stood by the bed-side, looking down at her pale face with passionate tenderness shining in his eyes. Her white cheeks turned crimson. "Mr. Colville!" she cried, angrily, "what means this unwarrantable intrusion?" "Oh, Lily! this from you!" he cried in sorrowful reproach. "Lily, I have saved your life, my darling, and this is my reward; when all others deserted you and left you in your coffin my love could not rest without one more look at your dear face. Yes, the love you spurned in happier days clung to you then and sought you amid the horrors of the dreadful charnel-house. I entered the vault; I opened the coffin; I kissed the lips that were dearer to me dead than those of any living woman. And then I discovered faint signs of life! In my rapture at the discovery I bore you away in my carriage and placed you under the care of a splendid physician. You revived; you lived--yes, dead to all the world beside, you live alone for me, my fair, my peerless Lily!" He smiled triumphantly, while a look of horror dawned in her eyes. "You--you will restore me to my friends?" she gasped in breathless agitation. "Lily, can you ask it? Can I bear to give you up, long and truly as I have loved you? When death, in compassion for my sorrow, has given you up from the very tomb itself to my loving arms could I give you back to your less devoted lover and live my life without you, my peerless darling? Lily, do not ask me for such a sacrifice." "I am never to see father, sister, friends, again?" asked she, with whitening lips. "Yes, yes, Lily. Only consent to reward my fidelity with your dear hand, and you shall see them all again." "I cannot," she moaned, faintly; "I am betrothed to another." "Death has broken the bond," said he; "your lover has torn you from his heart ere this in angry resentment at your supposed suicide. He believes that you loved another and chose death in preference to a loveless marriage with him. Give yourself to me, Lily, and that will confirm his belief." "Oh, never, never! I do not love you," she cried, vehemently. "Love would come in time, darling. Gratitude to the savior of your life would create love. I could make you happy, Lily; I have wealth, position, influence--all the things that woman values most." "I can never love anyone but Lancelot Darling," she said, while a blush tinged her cheek at the sweet confession. His brow grew dark as night. "Speak not the name of my hated rival," he cried, angrily. "I saved your life, not he! Yet this is your gratitude!"