“Ah, no,—­no, Clarence, you never alarm me when you speak:  only when you are silent!  Oh, if you thought me worthy of your trust; oh, if you had given me the right to reason with you in the sorrows that I yearn to share!”

Glyndon made no answer, but paced the room for some moments with disordered strides.  He stopped at last, and gazed at her earnestly.  “Yes, you, too, are his descendant; you know that such men have lived and suffered; you will not mock me,—­you will not disbelieve!  Listen! hark!—­what sound is that?”

“But the wind on the house-top, Clarence,—­but the wind.”

“Give me your hand; let me feel its living clasp; and when I have told you, never revert to the tale again.  Conceal it from all:  swear that it shall die with us,—­the last of our predestined race!”

“Never will I betray your trust; I swear it,—­never!” said Adela, firmly; and she drew closer to his side.  Then Glyndon commenced his story.  That which, perhaps, in writing, and to minds prepared to question and disbelieve, may seem cold and terrorless, became far different when told by those blanched lips, with all that truth of suffering which convinces and appalls.  Much, indeed, he concealed, much he involuntarily softened; but he revealed enough to make his tale intelligible and distinct to his pale and trembling listener.  “At daybreak,” he said, “I left that unhallowed and abhorred abode.  I had one hope still,—­I would seek Mejnour through the world.  I would force him to lay at rest the fiend that haunted my soul.  With this intent I journeyed from city to city.  I instituted the most vigilant researches through the police of Italy.  I even employed the services of the Inquisition at Rome, which had lately asserted its ancient powers in the trial of the less dangerous Cagliostro.  All was in vain; not a trace of him could be discovered.  I was not alone, Adela.”  Here Glyndon paused a moment, as if embarrassed; for in his recital, I need scarcely say that he had only indistinctly alluded to Fillide, whom the reader may surmise to be his companion.  “I was not alone, but the associate of my wanderings was not one in whom my soul could confide,—­faithful and affectionate, but without education, without faculties to comprehend me, with natural instincts rather than cultivated reason; one in whom the heart might lean in its careless hours, but with whom the mind could have no commune, in whom the bewildered spirit could seek no guide.  Yet in the society of this person the demon troubled me not.  Let me explain yet more fully the dread conditions of its presence.  In coarse excitement, in commonplace life, in the wild riot, in the fierce excess, in the torpid lethargy of that animal existence which we share with the brutes, its eyes were invisible, its whisper was unheard.  But whenever the soul would aspire, whenever the imagination kindled to the loftier ends, whenever the consciousness of our proper destiny struggled against the unworthy life I pursued,