Scarcely knowing why, or bestowing one thought on the nature of his intrusion, he ascended.  The place seemed familiar to him.  He entered a narrow gallery, where he paused, overcome by some sudden and overwhelming emotion.  The dog stood too, looking back with a low and sorrowful whine.  With a sudden effort he grappled with and shook off the dark spirit that threatened to overpower him.  A low murmur was heard apparently from a chamber at no great distance.  Without reflecting a moment on the impropriety of his situation, he hastily approached the door.  His guide, with a look of almost irresistible persuasion, implored him to enter.

It was the chamber of Constance.  A female was kneeling by the bed, too much absorbed to be conscious of his approach:  she was in the attitude of prayer.  He recognised the old nurse,—­her eye glistening in the fervour of devotion, whilst pouring forth, to her FATHER in secret, the agony of soul that words are too feeble to express.

Bending over the bed, as if for the support of some frail victim of disease, he beheld the lord of the mansion.  His look was wild and haggard;—­no moisture floated over his eyeballs:  they were glazed and motionless; arid as the hot desert,—­no refreshing rain dropped from their burning orbs, dimmed with the shadows of despair.

Stretched on the bed, her pale cheek resting on the bosom of her father, lay the yet beauteous form of Constance Holt.  A hectic flush at times passed across her features.  Her lip, shrunk and parched with the fever that consumed her, was moistened by an attendant with unremitting and unwearied assiduity; her eye often rose in tenderness on her parent, as if anxious to impart to him the consolation she enjoyed.

“Oh, I am happy, my father!” Here a sudden change was visible,—­some chord of sorrow was touched, and it vibrated to her soul.

Her father spoke not.

“I have loved!—­Oh, faithfully.  But, now—­let me die without a murmur to Thee, or one wish but Thy will, and I am happy!” She raised her soft and streaming eyes towards the throne of that Mercy she addressed.  The cloud passed, but she sank back on her pillow, exhausted with the conflict.  Her father bent over her in silent terror, anticipating the last struggle.  Suddenly he exclaimed, as if to call back the yet lingering spirit:—­

“Live, my Constance!  Could I save thee, thou blighted bud—­blighted by my”—­His lip grew pale; he struck his forehead, and a groan like the last expiring throe of nature escaped him.

“Would the destroyer of my peace were here!—­’Tis too late—­or I would not now forbid thy love.  But he was a traitor, a rebel—­else”——­

Constance gradually revived from her insensibility.  A sudden flash from the departing spirit seemed to have animated her—­a new and vehement energy, which strangely contrasted with her weak and debilitated frame.

“I have seen him,” she cried.  “Oh, methought his form passed before me;—­but it is gone!” She looked eagerly round the apartment; other eyes involuntarily followed,—­but no living object could be distinguished through the chill and oppressive gloom that brooded over that chamber of death.