The next morning, Clarence was awakened by a noise. He listened, and heard distinctly an alarmed cry proceeding from the room in which Talbot slept, and which was opposite to his own. He rose hastily and hurried to the chamber. The door was open; the old servant was bending over the bed: Clarence approached, and saw that he supported his master in his arms.
"Good God!" he cried, "what is the matter?" The faithful old man lifted up his face to Clarence, and the big tears rolled fast from eyes in which the sources of such emotion were well-nigh dried up.
"He loved you well, sir!" he said, and could say no more. He dropped the body gently, and throwing himself on the floor sobbed aloud. With a foreboding and chilled heart, Clarence bent forward; the face of his benefactor lay directly before him, and the hand of death was upon it. The soul had passed to its account hours since, in the hush of night, —passed, apparently, without a struggle or a pang, like the wind, which animates the harp one moment, and the next is gone.
Linden seized his hand; it was heavy and cold: his eye rested upon the miniature of the unfortunate Lady Merton, which, since the night of the attempted robbery, Talbot had worn constantly round his neck. Strange and powerful was the contrast of the pictured face—in which not a colour had yet faded, and where the hues and fulness and prime of youth dwelt, unconscious of the lapse of years—with the aged and shrunken countenance of the deceased.
In that contrast was a sad and mighty moral: it wrought, as it were, a contract between youth and age, and conveyed a rapid but full history of our passions and our life.
The servant looked up once more on the countenance; he pointed towards it, and muttered, "See, see how awfully it is changed!"
"But there is a smile upon it!" said Clarence, as he flung himself beside the body and burst into tears.