Much more conversation ensued in connection with matters in which our lovers felt more or less interest. At length the gentlemen rose to go away, when Gillespie thrust a face of horror into the door, and exclaimed, bolting, as he spoke, behind the Dean, “O, gentlemen, for God’s sake, save me! I’ll confess and acknowledge everything.”
“What’s the matter, Sir?” asked the Dean.
“The dead man, sir; he’s sitting up in the bed; and I know what he’s come back for. You’re a parson, sir, and, for heaven’s sake, stand between him and me.”
On proceeding to the room where the baronet’s son had been laid out, they found him sitting, certainly, on the bedside, wondering at the habiliments of death which were about him. That which all had supposed to have been death, was only a fit of catalepsy, brought on him by the appearance of his father, who had, on more than one occasion, left a terrible impress of himself upon his mind, and who, he had been informed some years before, was the cause of all his sufferings. Even at the sight of Lucy herself, he had been deeply agitated, although he could not tell why. He was immediately attended to, a physician sent for, and poor Lucy felt an elevation of heart and spirits which she had not experienced for many a long day.
“Oh, do not go,” she said to her lover and the Dean, “until I communicate to papa this twofold intelligence of delight; your strange good fortune, and the resurrection, I may term it, of my brother. The very object—the great engrossing object of papa’s life and ambition gained in so wonderful a way! Do, pray, gentlemen, remain for a few minutes until I see him. O, what delight, what ecstasy will it not give him!”
She accordingly went up stairs, slowly it is true, for she was weak; and nothing further was heard except one wild and fearful scream, whose sharp tones penetrated through the whole house.