“It was a vision—­a shadowy messenger from the tomb.  Yet, once more if I might see him—­ere I die.”  A deep sob, succeeded by a rapid gush of tears, relieved her; but it told of the powerful and all-pervading passion not yet extinguished in her breast.

“We shall meet!” again she raised her eyes towards that throne to which the sigh of the sufferer never ascended in vain.

“Yes, my own—­my loved Constance, now!” cried the stranger, rushing from his concealment.  He clasped her in his arms.  A gleam, like sunlight across the wave, shot athwart the shadow that was gathering on her eye.  It seemed the forerunner of a change.  The anxious father forbore to speak, but he looked on his daughter with an agony that seemed to threaten either reason or existence.  Constance gazed on her lover, but her eye gradually became more dim.  Her band relaxed in his grasp, yet her features wore a look of serenity and happiness.

“O most merciful Father!  Thou hast heard my prayer, through Him whose merits have found me a place in that glory to which I come.  Be merciful to him whose love is true as mine own, and faithful unto death.  Tyrone, we meet again!—­Oh, how have I prayed for thee!” Her eyes seemed to brighten even in this world with the glories of another.

“Farewell!—­I hear the hymns of yon ransomed ones around the throne.  They beckon my spirit from these dark places of sorrow.  Now—­farewell!”

She cast one look towards her lover:  it was the last glimpse of earth.  The next moment her gaze was on the brightness of that world whence sorrow and sighing flee away.  So sudden was the transition, that the first smile of the disembodied spirit seemed to linger on the abode she had left, like the evening cloud, reflecting the glories of another sky, ere it fades for ever into the darkness and solitude of night.

[Illustration:  HOGHTON TOWER.

Drawn by G. Pickering.  Engraved by Edw^d Finden.]

FOOTNOTES: 

[22] Cox, p. 415.

[23] Sydney’s Letters.

[24] Camden.

[25] Camden.

[26] Camden, p. 645.

[27] Winwood, vol. i. p. 369.

[28] In the parish church of St Chad, Rochdale, is a marble tablet, erected by John Entwisle, Esquire, a descendant of Sir Bertine, on which is the following inscription:—­

“To perpetuate a memorial in the church of St Alban’s (perished by time), this marble is here placed to the memory of a gallant and loyal man, Sir Bertine Entwisel, Knight, Viscount and Baron of Brybeke, in Normandy, and some time Bailiff of Constantin, in which office he succeeded his father-in-law, Sir John Ashton, whose daughter Lucy first married Sir Richard le Byron, an ancestor of the Lord Byrons, Barons of Rochdale, and, secondly, Sir Bertine Entwisel, who, after performing repeated acts of valour in the service of his sovereigns, Henry V. and VI., more particularly at Agincourt, was killed in the first battle of St Alban’s, and on his tomb was recorded in brass the following inscription:—­