of her family hung there, still surmounted by its regal crown.  Farewell to the glory and heraldry of England!—­I turned from such vanity with a slight feeling of wonder, at how mankind could have ever been interested in such things.  I bent over the lifeless corpse of my beloved; and, while looking on her uncovered face, the features already contracted by the rigidity of death, I felt as if all the visible universe had grown as soulless, inane, and comfortless as the clay-cold image beneath me.  I felt for a moment the intolerable sense of struggle with, and detestation for, the laws which govern the world; till the calm still visible on the face of my dead love recalled me to a more soothing tone of mind, and I proceeded to fulfil the last office that could now be paid her.  For her I could not lament, so much I envied her enjoyment of “the sad immunities of the grave.”

The vault had been lately opened to place our Alfred therein.  The ceremony customary in these latter days had been cursorily performed, and the pavement of the chapel, which was its entrance, having been removed, had not been replaced.  I descended the steps, and walked through the long passage to the large vault which contained the kindred dust of my Idris.  I distinguished the small coffin of my babe.  With hasty, trembling hands I constructed a bier beside it, spreading it with the furs and Indian shawls, which had wrapt Idris in her journey thither.  I lighted the glimmering lamp, which flickered in this damp abode of the dead; then I bore my lost one to her last bed, decently composing her limbs, and covering them with a mantle, veiling all except her face, which remained lovely and placid.  She appeared to rest like one over-wearied, her beauteous eyes steeped in sweet slumber.  Yet, so it was not—­she was dead!  How intensely I then longed to lie down beside her, to gaze till death should gather me to the same repose.

But death does not come at the bidding of the miserable.  I had lately recovered from mortal illness, and my blood had never flowed with such an even current, nor had my limbs ever been so instinct with quick life, as now.  I felt that my death must be voluntary.  Yet what more natural than famine, as I watched in this chamber of mortality, placed in a world of the dead, beside the lost hope of my life?  Meanwhile as I looked on her, the features, which bore a sisterly resemblance to Adrian, brought my thoughts back again to the living, to this dear friend, to Clara, and to Evelyn, who were probably now in Windsor, waiting anxiously for our arrival.

Methought I heard a noise, a step in the far chapel, which was re-echoed by its vaulted roof, and borne to me through the hollow passages.  Had Clara seen my carriage pass up the town, and did she seek me here?  I must save her at least from the horrible scene the vault presented.  I sprung up the steps, and then saw a female figure, bent with age, and clad in long mourning robes, advance through the dusky chapel, supported by a slender cane, yet tottering even with this support.  She heard me, and looked up; the lamp I held illuminated my figure, and the moon-beams, struggling through the painted glass, fell upon her face, wrinkled and gaunt, yet with a piercing eye and commanding brow—­I recognized the Countess of Windsor.  With a hollow voice she asked, “Where is the princess?”