CONCLUSION
"What angel shall
Bless this unworthy husband? He cannot thrive
Unless her prayers, whom Heaven delights to hear
And loves to grant, reprieve him from the wrath
Of greatest Justice."
SHAKESPEARE
"Love her, Angelo,
I have confessed her, and I know her virtue."
SHAKESPEARE
"Une vie à bien faire uniquement passée
D'innocence, d'amour, d'espoir, de pureté,
Tant d'aspirations vers son Dieu répétées,
Tant de foi dans la mort, tant de vertus jetées
En gage à l'Immortalité.
"Tant de nuits sans sommeil pour veiller la souffrance,
Tant de pain retranché pour nourrir l'Indigence;
Tant de pleurs toujours prêts à s'unir à des pleurs,
Tant de soupirs brûlans vers une autre patrie,
Et tant de patience, à porter une vie,
Dont la Couronne était ailleurs."
LAMARTINE
On a cold evening in February, Mrs. Middleton was sitting alone in the library of Elmsley Priory; the wind was howling round the old house in that mournful key which stirs up in the soul a vague emotion; the roaring of the swollen torrent was audible, and the low distant barking of the keeper's dogs chimed in with it. Mrs. Middleton was dressed in the deep mourning of a widow. She was not more than forty, and yet her hair was prematurely grey, and the heavy listlessness with which one of her hands hung by her side, and the other struck repeatedly and unconsciously the table on which she leant, told that the spring within was broken, and that suffering, and not time, had done its work upon her.
An embroidering-frame was near her, and after a while she drew it to herself and began to work. When she had made a few stitches she let the needle fall, and her head sank upon the support of the frame, and there she remained buried in thought till the door at the end of the library was softly opened. She looked up eagerly, and gazed in silence on the beautiful being who was approaching her, and who after kissing her on the forehead sat down near her, and employed herself with the work she had given up.
And that lovely vision, what was she like? What did that pale smooth brow, those earnest eyes, that bloodless cheek, and delicate form resemble? A lily shattered by the storm; a dove scared from her nest, but faithful in her fear. An expression wholly at variance with the features that wear it, is a startling thing. Tears in the eyes of an old and iron-featured man; laughter on a pale and dying face; care and deep-seated sorrow in the round lineaments of childhood, make us wonder and grieve; but more at variance than any of these was the expression of Alice Lovell's beautiful features with the character they seemed made to bear. Intense and anxious watchfulness marked it now, a tremulous quiver shook her hand as she drew the threads through the canvas; and though her large eyes were calm, and her attitude composed, the least sound made her start.
"How is he now?" inquired Mrs. Middleton in a voice scarcely above a whisper.
"Sleeping, thank God, and quietly too. Oh, Mrs. Middleton, hope is strong within me yet, and strength will be given us never to forsake him."
"Hope! strength! Alice, where are they to be found?"
Alice pointed to the sky and then to her own heart, and said, "There and here. In quietness and in confidence shall be our strength." After a pause she resumed, "You were with him some time to-day, did he speak to you?"
Mrs. Middleton grew paler still at this question, and bowed her head in assent.
"What did he say?" continued Alice. "Oh, do not spare me!– do not think of me! What did he say?"
Mrs. Middleton joined her hands together and exclaimed, "'Where is she? Where is she?' was what he said. Again and again he repeated these words in a tone of indescribable anguish, and I was almost thankful when his mind wandered again, and I could leave his dreadful question unanswered. Alice, my child, I am so weak, and you are so strong in your faith, in your hope, in your boundless charity, that I must give way before you, and for once ask you in mercy to let me speak of her. I could kneel on her grave and pray to be resigned; but now as it is I grow wild with terror – "
"Oh, let us speak of her, and let us pray for her; let us never have another secret fear, another unspoken terror. Let us pray that in this world she may still be blessed, or in a better she may have been mercifully received."
"You do not understand me yet, Alice. He does. The same horrible fear has darted through his mind, darkened and clouded as it is. Her own deed; her own hand… Alice, you never guessed the extent of his misery or of mine."
"Never guessed it, Mrs. Middleton? I have been with him in his hours of fierce delirium; I have been with him when he has taken me for her, and addressed to me words which have made my blood run cold; words of guilty love and of horrible remorse. I have lived between you and him during these days of darkness and agony. I have seen your hope die, and your terror grow; and do I not know what your fear is? – Suicide! Yes, let me speak the word at once, let me dive into your inmost thoughts, and let me carry consolation even into that extremity of misery. Who can declare the point where despair becomes madness? Who shall judge? Who shall condemn? Who can tell the secret things of the soul save the God who made it? He has set no limits to our prayers; and shall we say to His mercy, so far shalt thou go and no further?"
They knelt together, those two women; they poured forth their souls in prayer, and when they rose from their knees, and the elder of them leant her forehead against the breast of the younger and wept in silence, she blessed her in her heart; and she was right to bless her, for nobly and tenderly had Alice Lovell borne her part through the heavy trials that had assailed her. We heard of her last on the bed of sickness, and death was drawing near to her; but youth, and strength of body and mind carried her through, and when she rose from her couch of weakness and of pain, it was to hurry to the bed-side of the husband who had forsaken her, and who, after some days of agonised search after the victim of his relentless passion, maddened by the conviction that he had destroyed her, and haunted by an indescribable remorse, had lost in a brain fever all consciousness save of some intolerable anguish, and of that endless remorse. For many days he hovered between life and death, while his pale wife stood by his side and held his burning hand in hers; even while he raved in dreadful delirium of his love and his despair, and with frantic cries called upon the grave to give up its dead. She was indeed a ministering angel in that house of mourning, for there was another fierce but now subdued spirit, who without daring to approach the bed of suffering, was undergoing all the anguish of the blow she had struck, and which had recoiled upon herself. It was a fearful sight to see that old woman crying like a child over the ruin she had made, wringing her hands in despair, and with straining eyes and blanched cheeks, listening at the door of the room where the being, whom she had nursed as a child, and idolised as a man, whose passions she had fostered, whose life she had saved and embittered, to whom she had confided her child, and whom she had at last ruined by her blind and furious revenge, was raving, cursing, and dying. Between them stood that child whom she had sacrificed, and he had betrayed. With words of peace and of holy confidence, passing from one to the other, Alice spoke of hope and pardon, and turned the agony of the aged sufferer into penitence. By degrees she learnt from her lips all the secrets of her soul. From her she gathered the knowledge of that dark cloud which had hung over Ellen's life, and while she trembled and wept, in her heart there rose (as Mrs. Middleton had said) an immense pity, a boundless charity. Day by day she watched and prayed by Henry's side, and at last discerned a ray of light through the gloom. The fever left him, and one day that she had supported his head for several weary hours, he opened his languid eyes and said, "Alice, is it you?"
She pressed upon his cheek a kiss, like a mother's to a rescued child; but when he whispered in her ear the terrible question on which his life and his reason depended, her face was as pale as his, and her tears fell like rain-drops on his brow. Gradually his strength returned, but still at times his mind wandered. For hours he would remain with his eyes fixed on vacancy, and his lips would move as if unconsciously, and form the fatal words of inquiry which never received an answer. Sometimes he took Alice for Ellen, and kneeling at her feet he, would implore her pardon, and curse and upbraid himself as her murderer and destroyer. With heroic patience, but with a sickening heart and a shuddering frame she listened to these ravings, and met his wild and involuntary confessions with a silent appeal to Heaven for mercy for him, and for strength for herself.
After a while she went with him to Elmsley, and there continued her work of love and endurance. Her strength seemed to increase with the demands upon it. Mrs. Middleton's broken spirit, and helpless despondency, needed her support almost as much as Henry's weakened mind. Her grandmother had returned to the cottage at Bridman, and nothing cheered the solitude of that melancholy abode, but the occasional visits of that angel who moved amidst all these various sufferings and dark associations like a messenger of peace. It was as a hard task, and many a martyr's palm has perchance been more easily won. She became identified with all their sorrows – almost with the remorse she witnessed; perhaps she suffered more than any of them, for she knew more than any one else of that terrible history which had driven Henry to madness, and Ellen (as she supposed) to self-destruction. Through her grandmother's tardy and unavailing misgivings, she learnt the details of that obstinate belief in the lost Ellen's guilt which had led her to hate and persecute her. She heard from her lips how that sentiment had grown into a passion when fostered by a bitter and burning resentment; how, under the influence of that feeling, she had one night made her way into the house at Elmsley at dusk, with the intention of upbraiding Henry, and denouncing Ellen. She had found her alone, and asleep before the organ on which she had been playing. A savage hatred filled her soul, and she bent over that sleeping form with a fierce impulse to revenge upon her at once the death of Julia, and Henry's desertion of her own child. Conscience and terror alike checked her uplifted arm; she withdrew in silence, but left behind her the first of that series of mysterious threats, by which she haunted the mind, and scared the peace of that wretched and deeply-tried being. She confessed to Alice how she had employed and excited Robert Harding to act the part of a spy, to dodge the steps and watch the actions of her faithless husband, and of the unhappy object of his fatal passion. A superstitious belief in a mysterious call to denounce and to visit the crime she had witnessed, constantly counteracted by the influence which Henry possessed over her, and an intense anxiety for the innocent girl she had committed to his reckless hands, had kept her in a state of mind bordering on distraction. Harding was one of those men, who, dogged and obstinate in one respect, was weak and manageable in all others. He blindly followed her dictates, as long as she persuaded him that her aim was to protect or to avenge Alice, whom he loved with an instinctive, faithful, and humble devotion. He shared her hatred of Ellen, and on the day of her marriage had mixed with the crowd at the church door, and thrust into her hand that warning which had been so awfully realised. At the time of the election at – , he had watched from the gallery where he stood, with a strange mixture of grief and rage, Alice's altered countenance, and her husband's open and shameless devotion to her rival. He had in his possession one of those letters which Mrs. Tracy had so often written and then recalled; he resolved to deliver it at once, and thus bring sudden disgrace and misery upon that guilty pair whose destiny was in his hands. When he had done the deed, and retired to his solitary abode at Bridman, he felt frightened at what he had hazarded, and trembled like a child at the idea of Mrs. Tracy's anger. It was, therefore, a relief to him when Henry sought him out, and humbled himself before him. He was released from an awful responsibility, and returned to his post, supported by his aunt's bounty, obedient to her orders, and with a dog-like, self-denying fidelity, ready to die at Alice's feet, to kill her husband, or to save his life at the expense of his own, according as he was told that she willed it – that she required it. During the time he was in Mr. Escourt's service he might have been betrayed into more active steps, had he not detected, with a keen and instinctive jealousy, the motive which dictated his patron's sharp investigations, and the object he had in view; which, with a singular mixture of cunning and honesty, he contrived to defeat.
Mrs. Tracy described to Alice, in tones and with looks that made her shudder, how her spirit was moved, even at the altar where Ellen's ill-omened marriage was solemnised, to denounce that pale, stern bride as a homicide, and to proclaim aloud that the trembling hand which one man bestowed, and another received, with such loving trust, was stained with blood. She had risen to speak; the words were upon her lips:
"Phrenzy to her heart was given,
To speak the malison of Heaven,"
when she met the full and glaring force of Henry's flashing eyes. She could not withstand their dark and dreadful power; Alice, her helpless child, was by his side, and she sunk back in her seat, overcome and subdued. On the day of Alice's confinement her hopes had been raised, and her heart softened, by some indications of sensibility on Henry's part. The reaction was violent when he returned after an absence of several hours, which she knew had been devoted to Ellen. She reproached and upbraided him, and he answered her by a careless and brutal avowal of the nature of his feelings, and he left the house again at dinner-time without even visiting his wife. Then in her fury she resolved at all risks to separate him from Ellen; she broke open his desk, where she found notes which excited her hatred and anger to such a degree that she determined to send them at once to Edward Middleton, and thus place an eternal barrier between the guilty pair. The result of that fatal act she now deplored with a ceaseless and bitter sorrow, and day after day, with tears and groans, entreated the forgiveness of her thrice-injured child. Patiently and mercifully did Alice listen to that misguided and unhappy woman's confessions; she abstained by a reproachful look or a severe word from heaping fresh misery on that aged and humbled head, but she pondered over these things in silence; and when she returned to Henry's side and he held out his hand to greet her, hers was cold and nervous, and her heart sunk within her as she fished her eyes on his, and in their wild and restless expression read that fearful retribution which sometimes falls on those who have walked in their own ways, and defied the justice of an Almighty Judge, till the light that was in them has become darkness, and His awful vengeance has overtaken them. Great indeed was that darkness in Henry Lovell's case – greater still from the light that had once been in him. Sparks of genius, touches of feeling, relics of the high capabilities of mind that had once been his, flashed through the night of his soul, and made its present darkness more sadly visible.
Alas, for all that God gives and man destroys! Alas, for all that might be and is not! Genius and intellect, which should subdue and regenerate worlds, and with noble thoughts, and words of fire, carry the truth from one hemisphere to the other – where are ye? What do ye? Consumed upon the altar of a withering selfishness – cramped and debased by the bonds of a narrow scepticism – man has prostituted you to vile uses. Slaves of his passions, and ministers of evil, He has made you; – and where God had said, "Let there be light," has too often answered, "Let there be darkness."
Henry's gloomy and wayward depression increased every day, although his intellect was not wholly obscured; but at the times that it was clearest, he seemed to suffer more than during its hours of partial aberration. He gave way less than at first to fits of violent irritation; the terrible expressions he used to utter, and the murmurs and curses which rose to his lips with such frightful bitterness, were at an end. He even ceased to ask that fatal question with which he had been wont to torture his wife and sister; he listened in silence to what they said, and once made a faint attempt to smile when Alice spoke cheerfully to him. He often gazed on her in silence, and watched her intently as she moved about the room. Once, when she was sitting at her work opposite to him, she heard him say, in a low voice, "Notre Dame de bon secours." She looked up with tears in her eyes; he rose wildly, and cried, "Your tears shall not avail you;" and then he turned away, and did not speak for some hours.
One morning that the sun was shining brightly, and the mild air forestalled the spring, Alice had thrown open a window that looked upon the flower-garden. A bird was chirping a few shrill notes near it; and Henry listened to them with an appearance of pleasure. When the bird flew away, he went to the window, and gazed earnestly on some early spring flowers, which were just coming into blossom. Alice opened a book on the table, and read aloud the following lines: —
"Sweet nurslings of the vernal skies.
Bathed in soft airs and fed with dew,
What more of magic in you lies
To fill the hearths fond view?
In childhood's sports, companions gay
In sorrow, on life's downward way,
How soothing! In our last decay.
Memorials prompt and true."
Henry held out his hand for the book, and read over these lines in silence; he then glanced at the title-page, shuddered, and flung it from him. Alice picked it up, and looked anxiously at him.
"Was not Dr. Dodd hung for forgery?" he exclaimed. She turned very pale. He saw it; and said, "You need not be frightened now. I am not mad. In that very book I forged the first link of that infernal chain with which I bound and destroyed her."
Alice knelt by him, and whispered —
"Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow."
He drew fiercely back, and cried —
"There may be mercy for others; there can be none for me. Look into your Bible, you will see in it what I have done. Turned her body and her soul into hell! God alone should do that. I have done it. Alice, if you believe, you must tremble. Ay, the devils do so too. Poor angel! God has turned thee into an earthly hell. Pure spirit! chained to a fiend, thy fiery trial draws to an end."
He sank back into his chair, and muttered —
"The worm that never dies. Ay, I understand it now."
One day that Alice had been walking before breakfast, and was returning home with that heaviness of step, and abstraction from outward things, which prolonged and acute mental suffering produces, the porter's wife stopped her as she passed the lodge, to tell her that half an hour before a gentleman had come to the gate in a post-chaise, and had expressed an anxious desire to see her; that on finding she was out, he had hesitated a moment as to what he should do, but that at last he had stepped into the lodge, and written a letter, which he had desired her to deliver to Mrs. Lovell as soon as she returned. Alice took it with a mixture of fear and curiosity. The only conjecture she could form was, that it came from Edward Middleton. The unbroken solitude in which he had lived – the obstinate silence which he had maintained when Mrs. Middleton once ventured to address a few lines to him, imploring him to aid her in the search of his guilty but unfortunate wife – made her break the seal of this letter with nervous anxiety.
She glanced at the signature, and, at once relieved and disappointed, she saw it was not from him, and then read as follows: —
"Madam,
"As one who, in his ministry, has received from dying lips a solemn confession – as a man who has witnessed a deep repentance, and a great affliction, I address you.
"There is one who has been for a while as if she had been dead to you and yours, but who is yet alive, although her life is passing away like a morning cloud. In His name, who never broke the bruised reed, I ask you to smooth her pillow, and to bring peace and pardon to that weary spirit. She has made the sacrifice of her life to God; and her only desire is to be forgiven by those whom she has trespassed against, and to forgive those who have trespassed against her. I dare not say more. Just, it is hardly possible that you can be; merciful, I am certain that you will be. Mrs. Edward Middleton is at – ; she is in the last stage of a rapid consumption, and before many days are gone by, her spirit will have returned to the God who gave it. She has confessed to me the sins and the sorrows of her short and troubled life. One heavy trial she has been spared, in the knowledge that your life, Madam, has been saved; and if she could receive from you, from her aunt, and, above all, from the husband whom she has offended, a token of forgiveness, her life might still close (I use her own expression) 'with one untroubled hour.' I heard her murmur these last words to herself, as, out of a nosegay, which had been in kindness sent her, she selected a passionflower, the sight of which affected her strangely.
"I have undertaken this journey for the sole purpose of informing you of Mrs. Middleton's present residence. I shall await your answer at the inn at Elmsley. My reason for addressing this letter to you, Madam, was the fear of causing Mrs. William Middleton too sudden an emotion in her present state of health. To your hand I commit the task, and I pray that you may be guided and blessed in the performance of it.
"William Lacy."
Alice had begun to read this letter as she was walking towards the house; but as soon as she had read the few first lines, and that the sense of them burst upon her, she staggered to a bench, and a great faintness came over her. She read on, however; and, as the letter ended with that prayer for her which had been so fervently put up, she closed her eyes for an instant, and said Amen with her whole heart.
The letter had rolled at her feet, and as she stooped for it, her husband suddenly joined her. He picked it up, and asked whence it came. She trembled and turned pale. He saw it, and guessed it all. He seized her hands, and looked wildly into her face —
"Is she alive?"
"She is, Henry, she is."
He fell with his face to the ground, and for the first time in his life his soul spoke to God.
When he arose he was very pale, but he took the letter from Alice's hand, and read it through in silence. "Not dead, but dying!" He hid his face in his hands and wept convulsively.
"Alice," he cried at last, as his wife bent over him in speechless sympathy, "Alice, my guardian angel! never forsake me – never leave me! Teach me to live; teach me to die; teach me to see her die, and not to blaspheme and to curse. Put your hand on my forehead, and drive away the dreadful thoughts that come over me… She is dying; she is alone: what are we doing here? Alice, I must see this man, this priest; quick, quick – send him to me; there is no time to lose."
There was a wildness in Henry's countenance and manner which alarmed Alice. She walked fast with him to the house, and despatched a groom to the inn with an earnest entreaty to Mr. Lacy that he would come to them directly. She then went to Mrs. Middleton, and, with tenderness and caution, informed her of that glad, mournful news, which relieved her worst fears, only by summoning her to the death-bed of that Ellen whom she so passionately loved, and whose name vibrated in her ear, and thrilled through her heart, with a strange and undying power. She rose as from a deep sleep, and prepared to go to her; but there was no gladness in the revival of her fainting spirit, and no hope in the pilgrimage before her.
An hour afterwards Henry Lovell received Mr. Lacy in his room. He had spoken kindly and tenderly to Mrs. Middleton. When Alice met him, overcome by the sense of all that they two alone as yet knew and felt, and by an instinctive dread of the interview about to take place with Henry, she fell on her knees before him; he laid his hand upon her head, and said in a voice which trembled with emotion —
"The blessing of an old man be upon you, my daughter; and may the God whose servant I am never forsake you in life or in death."
Alice rose and fixed her earnest eyes on Mr. Lacy's venerable countenance, and said slowly and solemnly —
"You have brought us tidings of mournful joy, and you will carry back with you tidings of peace and of hope to poor Ellen's dying spirit. Oh, Mr. Lacy, have you not a blessing to leave behind you? Have you no words of peace to speak to him, even to him who is now waiting for you? I know not in what spirit he will receive you. Dark shades sweep over his soul, and his sufferings are terrible. He is recovering slowly from a brain fever – "
Henry opened the door of the adjoining room. The colour of his face was changed; he looked quite unlike himself; and Alice started at the strange sound of his voice, when he said, "Do not detain Mr. Lacy, Alice: my time is short, and I have much to say to him."
Mr. Lacy followed him into his study; he shut the door, and begged him to sit down. He looked at him steadily for a minute, and then said —
"You know all my history?"
"Some parts of it," Mr. Lacy replied.
"You know, then, that you speak to a man who has destroyed, by a series of iniquitous persecutions, a woman whom he so devotedly loved that even now – "
"Mr. Lovell, I am not come here to listen to the avowal of an unholy passion; I am come to bring you that forgiveness which you so much need, and to claim from you a confession – "
"Stop, Mr. Lacy; you must listen to me, or you will drive me mad," said Henry, with a terrible laugh, "and then what confession will you get? Listen to me. I love Ellen Middleton so passionately, that were I not dying myself, I could not even now do her justice. Though two hours ago I fancied I could have given my existence only to know her alive and in her husband's arms, even though I might never see her again, yet now—now that I have heard of her, – that I see you who have seen her face and heard her voice, the dreadful struggles I go through only leave me life and sense enough to prove to you that I was in my right mind when I wrote this."
He held out a letter to Mr. Lacy, who took it in silence.
"Take that letter to Edward Middleton, Mr. Lacy; you may read it first yourself. If, when he reads it, he forgives his wife and curses me, I shall be satisfied. Tell him, then, that I am mad or dead; I shall be so by that time. When you see her again, tell her not to look so pale, or stare so wildly when I dream of her; tell her not to hang over me, or stand by my bedside and moan so piteously. Did you say she was dead?"
"No; she is dying; and she is prepared to die; she prays, she hopes, she submits, and God will receive her, for His mercy is infinite."
"A ministering angel she will then be, while I lie howling! A gulf between us! What am I thinking of? Where have I read that? There is something very wrong here! I beg your pardon, Mr. Lacy, I will not detain you a moment more. Perhaps you will be so kind as to let me know the result of your interview with Edward Middleton? and give my love to Ellen; I shall call upon her to-morrow."
There was something so horrible in the familiar tone with which these last words were spoken, that Mr. Lacy shuddered, and breathed a mental prayer for the wretched man whose senses seemed to have failed him after the strong and persevering effort he had made to collect them for one important object. In a few brief words he warned Alice, as he left him, of the wild and sudden manner in which their conversation had been broken off, and strongly urged her to send for instant medical advice. She did so; and after taking leave of him, and murmuring in an almost inaudible voice the words, "Pray for us!" she returned to her post with that sinking of heart, and strength of spirit, which those only know who feel acutely, and never give way. She did not inform Mrs. Middleton of the alarming symptoms which indicated the return of what they most dreaded. She would not, by rousing her fears, detain her from the death-bed of Henry's victim; she sent her there, as to a mournful refuge from the terrors she herself anticipated. When she had seen her take her departure, she knelt alone for a few minutes in her room before a picture of the Crucifixion, which hung there; she offered to God, in a few brief words, the agony she was about to endure; and then, with a steady step and a calm countenance, she walked into the room where Henry was, and sat down quietly to her work at a small distance from him. She saw by his eye and his countenance that he was struggling with the delirious fever which was coming upon him; and while she kept her hand near the bell, which at an instant's notice was to be answered, and her eye upon the avenue through which she could see the doctor arrive, she spoke now and then in a quiet tone, and gently and firmly answered the wild questions he addressed to her. Once he called loudly and fiercely for music; he muttered something about David and his harp; he bade her drive the evil spirit from him; he began to speak rapidly and incoherently, and to chafe at her silence. She could not play; she had never sung to him before; for the first time, she did. Her voice was pure, and sweet, and loud; it rose in the silence of that twilight hour with a strange and awful harmony. She sang the airs of those sacred chaunts which fall on the ear like dreamings of eternity. Two old servants who were in the outward room fell on their knees and listened. For more than an hour that solemn, mournful song continued; it thrilled through their very souls, and affected them more deeply than the most passionate cries of grief or of terror could have done. It only ceased when the doctor arrived; and Henry was persuaded, in a moment of gloomy and indifferent abstraction, to retire to bed, and yield himself to his care. But no remedies, no treatment availed to check the progress of the fever, which increased every hour, and which was accompanied by the fiercest delirium, and the most frantic ravings. His struggles were fearful: his attempts at self-destruction frequent; three men could hardly hold him down. Towards morning, in one of those paroxysms of delirious fury, he broke a blood-vessel, and Alice, who had never left his bed-side, was covered with blood. She stirred not even then; she saw in the doctor's face that the danger was imminent; for the prostration of strength which followed the accident was sudden and awful; and one of those indescribable changes which announce the approach of dissolution was apparent. She whispered to one of the servants to send for the clergyman, and then she knelt by the bed-side and gazed with an agonising intensity on Henry's deathly pale face. His eyes were closed in the helplessness of utter exhaustion, and his breath hardly dimmed the mirror that was held to his lips. After a few minutes of that nameless anguish which thought dares not dwell upon, nor words describe, she saw his eyes open and turn to her with an expression of intense inquiry, full of the consciousness of death, of the sense of a coming eternity, and of that question, deferred too long, and asked too late, "What shall I do to be saved?"