“And yet my pistol bullets hurt him not; he has left the tokens of his presence on the neck of Flora.”

“Peace, oh! peace.  Do not, I pray you, accumulate reasons why I should receive such a dismal, awful superstition.  Oh, do not, Marchdale, as you love me!”

“You know that my attachment to you,” said Marchdale, “is sincere; and yet, Heaven help us!”

His voice was broken by grief as he spoke, and he turned aside his head to hide the bursting tears that would, despite all his efforts, show themselves in his eyes.

“Marchdale,” added Henry, after a pause of some moments’ duration, “I will sit up to-night with my sister.”

“Do—­do!”

“Think you there is a chance it may come again?”

“I cannot—­I dare not speculate upon the coming of so dreadful a visitor, Henry; but I will hold watch with you most willingly.”

“You will, Marchdale?”

“My hand upon it.  Come what dangers may, I will share them with you, Henry.”

“A thousand thanks.  Say nothing, then, to George of what we have been talking about.  He is of a highly susceptible nature, and the very idea of such a thing would kill him.”

“I will; be mute.  Remove your sister to some other chamber, let me beg of you, Henry; the one she now inhabits will always be suggestive of horrible thoughts.”

“I will; and that dreadful-looking portrait, with its perfect likeness to him who came last night.”

“Perfect indeed.  Do you intend to remove it?”

“I do not.  I thought of doing so; but it is actually on the panel in the wall, and I would not willingly destroy it, and it may as well remain where it is in that chamber, which I can readily now believe will become henceforward a deserted one in this house.”

“It may well become such.”

“Who comes here?  I hear a step.”

There was a tip at the door at this moment, and George made his appearance in answer to the summons to come in.  He looked pale and ill; his face betrayed how much he had mentally suffered during that night, and almost directly he got into the bed-chamber he said,—­

I shall, I am sure, be censured by you both for what I am going to say; but I cannot help saying it, nevertheless, for to keep it to myself would destroy me.”

“Good God, George! what is it?” said Mr. Marchdale.

“Speak it out!” said Henry.

“I have been thinking of what has occurred here, and the result of that thought has been one of the wildest suppositions that ever I thought I should have to entertain.  Have you never heard of a vampyre?”

Henry sighed deeply, and Marchdale was silent.

“I say a vampyre,” added George, with much excitement in his manner.  “It is a fearful, a horrible supposition; but our poor, dear Flora has been visited by a vampyre, and I shall go completely mad!”

He sat down, and covering his face with his hands, he wept bitterly and abundantly.