He paused for several minutes, and gradually his face assumed a look of ungovernable anguish, while he added, in a dreary, desolate tone, unlike any human voice,—
"I could weep for my own ruin,—for my sister's,—but the time is past. Never shall I shed another tear! Our sin be on the Abbe Mordaunt's head! The withering curse of a dying man be on his head! The misery of eternal ruin be on his head, as it is on mine! For his own purposes he nurtured every wild passion in our young blood. He taught me the mad ambition that was my ruin,—promised me impunity here and hereafter, if I assisted in his schemes; and now, after being his tool, I am, like a useless tool, cast aside! But could he silence my outraged conscience? No! The gibbet is forever hovering before my sight, and the curse of heaven is borne to my soul in every blast!"
"Yet you are still in this world of hope, where none can be finally condemned," said Henry, solemnly. "Till the grave closes over your head, mercy and pardon may yet be asked, and may yet be granted! Ernest Anstruther, from the hour of my mother's death until now, you have most barbarously injured me, but mortal man must not keep up immortal anger. I only obey our beneficent Creator in saying, that if you repent, I heartily forgive you. Your life is probably forfeited to the outraged laws of man, but may your soul find mercy in its utmost need."
"I have been your deadliest foe, De Lancey, and haunted your steps with my hatred from childhood; but it is done," continued Anstruther, with a look of bleak and barren agony. "I will not live to be caged in prison, a spectacle of scorn and infamy, to die a death of shame. How different from what I once hoped! There shall be no to-morrow for me in this world! A fire is at my heart, which can only be quenched by death! It is better not to be, than to be miserable! I shall give my body to the beasts of the field, or the birds in the air. I shall find a bed where no dreams shall haunt me, and a sleep from which there is no awakening! A wolf may lose his teeth, but you cannot change his nature! As a madman I have lived, and as a madman I shall die! We must sleep in the bed we prepare for ourselves! Before that sun shall have traveled another hour, you, Henry De Lancey, shall be raised to honor, and I shall have died, covered with infamy and disgrace. I never stir now, without the fatal means of release."
Marion shivered from head to foot, at the ghastly sound of Anstruther's voice, but paralyzed with terror, she dared not stir, for already a loaded pistol was in his hand. A fearful ghastly smile distorted his countenance,—the smile of a maniac,—a smile such as may be seen on the lips of a corpse, and an expression gleamed in his eye, which it curdled her blood to look upon, and might have struck terror into the strongest mind; but Henry, in a calm, deliberate voice, replied,—
"There is no such dreamless sleep, Anstruther, as you describe! Even Satan himself believes in futurity! Whatever be your sorrow, and worse than sorrow, your sin, do not madly hasten to that world where there is no peace and no pardon. Take pity upon yourself."
"Mine has been a desperate life, and it shall have a desperate end," replied Ernest, with a sullen, deadly smile on his bloodless lips; but trying to assume a tone of reckless indifference, he added, "I never was one to choke upon the tail! I have gazed at the moon, and fallen in the gutter, but, De Lancey, for the sake of that good old man, Sir Arthur, who was your benefactor and mine, I will not die without doing you justice. The wax of secrecy may now be broken, and here are papers clearly and indisputably to prove that you are the legitimate son of Lord Doncaster. They purify your mother's character from every aspersion, and testify without doubt your title to be Lord Dunraven."
Had an apparition arisen through the floor, or had a cannon gone off at Henry's ear, he could scarcely have been more startled and astonished, while, with an exclamation of joy and rapture, Marion rushed up to him, saying, in accents of tremulous joy, while he stood bewildered with surprise, and then grasping the packet in his hand, staggered to a seat, "It is then as uncle Arthur once almost believed! Oh, Henry, what joy! If he had but lived to hear it! Can this be possible!"
After a few moments given to emotion and wonder, while Henry seemed almost as if his spirit had taken wing from the body, Marion having in some degree recovered herself, looked round, and observed with surprise that they were alone! The madman, taking advantage of Henry's agitation, had rushed wildly from the house, to be seen and heard of no more. Henry rose, intending instantly to give an alarm, and to follow in pursuit of Anstruther; but scarcely had he stirred a step, before he and Marion were startled by hearing, in the adjoining room, a shriek so shrill and appalling, so heart-broken and delirious, that in an agony of alarm, they hurried forward to the hall. A confused murmur, a buzz of suppressed astonishment had arisen among the assembled crowd, in which were many countenances expressing strong fear, others wearing only an air of gaping curiosity, many with their hands clasped in amazement, and others expanding them in terror, but all listening with looks of motionless attention, while every eye was turned towards the table on which the murdered body had been laid, and a deep silence ensued, of hushed expectation, as if the stage were about to exhibit a tragedy of exciting interest.
Henry glanced rapidly around, and saw standing beside the corpse a tall female, whose aspect filled all present with surprise. Her worn and haggard countenance seemed cold and rigid as the figure on a tomb-stone, and her cheek had become overspread with a damp and leaden paleness; while in speechless horror, which seemed as if it amounted almost to insanity, she pointed her long, ghastly finger towards the body. A hundred eyes were now bent on hers, and her bewildered glance swept for a moment round the assembled crowd, with a look of unutterable wretchedness, till at length her eye fell on Lord Doncaster. On him she now fixed an unshrinking gaze, while she spoke in a low, hoarse whisper, which sounded with terrifying distinctness through the large old hall, and fell upon every ear with a solemnity and awfulness like the knell of death.