I half forgot my interest in old Mrs. Allen, as my heart beat responsive to the pulsings of nature, and my thoughts flew upwards and away as on the wings of eagles.  But my faithful feet had borne me steadily onwards, and I was at the gate opening to the grounds of the Allen House, before I was conscious of having passed over half the distance that lay between that and my home.  I looked up, and saw a light in the north-west chamber, but the curtains were down.

On entering the house, I was shown by the servant who admitted me, into the small office or reception room opening from the hall.  I had scarcely seated myself, when a tall woman, dressed in black, came in, and said, with a graceful, but rather stately manner—­

“The Doctor, I believe?”

How familiar the voice sounded!  And yet I did not recognise it as the voice of any one whom I had known, but rather as a voice heard in dreams.  Nor was the calm, dignified countenance on which my eyes rested, strange in every lineament.  The lady was, to all appearance, somewhere in the neighborhood of sixty, and, for an elderly lady, handsome.  I thought of my remark to Constance about the beauty and deformity of age, and said to myself, “Here is one who has not lived in vain.”

I arose as she spoke, and answered in the affirmative.

“You have come too late,” she said, with a touch of feeling in her voice.

“Not dead?” I ejaculated.

“Yes, dead.  Will you walk up stairs and see her?”

I followed in silence, ascending to the chamber which had been occupied by Mrs. Allen since the old Captain’s death.  It was true as she had said; a ghastly corpse was before me.  I use the word ghastly, for it fully expresses the ugliness of that lifeless face, withered, marred, almost shorn of every true aspect of humanity.  I laid my hand upon her—­the skin was cold.  I felt for her pulse, but there was no sign of motion in the arteries.

“It is over,” I said, lifting myself from my brief examination, “and may God have mercy upon her soul!” The last part of the sentence was involuntary.

“Amen!”

I felt that this response was no idle ejaculation.

“How was she affected?” I asked.  “Has she been sick for any time?  Or did life go out suddenly?”

“It went out suddenly,” replied the lady—­“as suddenly as a lamp in the wind.”

“Was she excited from any cause?”

“She has been in an excited state ever since our arrival, although every thing that lay in our power has been done to quiet her mind and give it confidence and repose.”

She spoke calmly, as one, who held a controlling position there, and of right.  I looked into her serene face, almost classic in its outlines, with an expression of blended inquiry and surprise, that it was evident did not escape her observation, although she offered no explanation in regard to herself.

I turned again to the corpse, and examined it with some care.  There was nothing in its appearance that gave me any clue to the cause which had produced this sudden extinguishment of life.