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the sitting room; and already, moanings and mutterings were audible, which I rightly conjectured to proceed from the sufferer.

"I was not aware that my poor mother was sensible?" said I, addressing my brother. But Danby made no reply: he only looked paler and graver than before.

I entered the sick room, without noticing that in a chair close beside the door, rigid and motionless, sat Lord Ormington, as if spellstruck and unable to tear himself away; and proceeded straight to the couch, on which, under a slight coverlet, lay the wasted form of Lady Ormington. They had placed an air cushion covered with dark silk, belonging to her easy chair, under her head, by way of affording her cooler support; which served only to throw out into more terrible relief the whiteness of her ghastly features, and scattered grey hairs.

For there was no deception now,-no silk curls, no becoming cap! All had been

removed by order of her medical attendants: and, as if in bitter contrast with the coquetry of adornment to which to the last she had been so fondly wedded, her white hairs streamed over the black pillow; combining with her closed eyes and blue lips, and, above all, the ensanguined linen staunching the blood round her neck, to augment the horror of the scene.—

I advanced to take her hand; and the white bony fingers clutched to mine with the convulsive snatch of the dying.

But this was not the worst. As soon as the emotions which had overcome me on entering subsided sufficiently to admit of my seeing and hearing distinctly, I perceived that the moaning sound which had struck me on my arrival, conveyed the wanderings of delirium.

The woman, about to appear at the judg ment seat of GOD, was back in her guilty past,-young, lovely, vain,-fluttering at Ranelagh,-parading at court.-The grey-headed,

withered, dying woman was again the wanton beauty!

"Sir Lionel!" she muttered-"come hither Sir Lionel!-Beware of that fellow Coulson.

He has his eye upon us. He is in Lord Ormington's confidence. - To-night, at the Pantheon, you shall know more.-The Queen received me coldly yesterday, dear Lionel,—I am afraid people are beginning to talk."

These words, though incoherently uttered,— interrupted by the gasps of failing life, and breathed through the foam that gathers on the lip of the dying,—were sufficiently audible to bring a burning flush to my cheek.

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Ay, ay!"-gasped the sufferer, after a long interval of exhaustion,-" it is all up with him, -it is all up with him!-I knew it would end so,-those fatal Argyle Rooms!-Hazardalways hazard!-at any time he would have sacrificed me to the dice-box.-Arrested?-In the King's Bench?—And he still expects me, me to go and visit him in the King's Bench!-

Disguise myself! ha, ha, ha!—a pretty risk,— with Coulson always on the watch. Take Cecil, too?-no, no!-As if he cared about the boy!He cares for nothing but himself and the Duthé -opera-dancers and hazard-and—hazard— hazard-hazard !-Lord Ormington was right. He may forgive me-but I shall never forgive myself. Minuets? ha, ha, ha!-They have not had a minuet before at Almack's these forty years!"

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Then followed those hideous gasps, that rattling in the throat, announcing that these fatal revelations were wrung from her soul by the stifling hand of death ;-that her secrets escaped her heart only because her heart was "fracted and corroborate."

I now first perceived, by the deprecating glance of Danby from the bed towards the door, that Lord Ormington was present. Involuntarily, my own eyes took the same direction. Impossible to surmise whether he heard all we were hearing!-His eyes were fixed upon

the floor. Only the summit of his bald head

was perceptible.

"If we could persuade him to leave the room," -Danby was beginning in one of his calm low whispers. But at that moment, the broken ejaculations of the dying woman recommenced.

"The child,-hurt the child? - injure the child?-not he! Lord Ormington is a merciful man—ha, ha, ha!—very merciful. He promised if I would give up Pharaoh and Macao, and never see Lionel again, for the sake of his children, he would not expose me.-Ha! ha! ha! For the sake of his children? for the sake of his purse!-Wasn't it, Lionel ?-Ha! ha! ha! -He had not generosity enough to feel my offences as they ought to have been felt,—for if he had, I should never have offended.Such a marriage!-But my mother told me I could not refuse!-family diamonds-family points. Miss Richardson, take away the handkerchief from Bihiche's glass case. I can bear to look at her now. Cecil! don't laugh at me

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