When Esther Vaughan came to the dwelling of the painter, she was radiant with a health which had triumphed over sorrow and long watching, but the seeds of disease now fastened upon her frame, and she sunk under its influence, growing daily feebler. The almost distracted husband employed the best physicians in the city, and under their efforts Esther, for a while, seemed to revive. One day, in solemn conclave, they decided that the patient would live, and announced the intelligence to the poor painter, as he sat in his lonely studio, with much pomposity and emphasis. At the time of this announcement, the painter was standing opposite the open door through which the physicians had just entered. At the moment when a smile of gratified love was lighting up his intelligent countenance, his eyes, looking beyond the group of visitors, caught in the corridor those of the strange bidder for the veiled picture. The unknown shook his head slowly and mournfully, then turned and retired.
"Stop him, gentlemen," cried the painter, bursting through the group of leeches; "he is a deadly enemy!"
The physicians looked at each other, smiled darkly, and shook their heads.
"Poor Grey!" said an old doctor.
"Mad?" asked the youngest of the group.
"The cell, the chain, and scourge would be a wholesome prescription," said the first speaker.
Such were the tender mercies of science to madness in the eighteenth century.
It was a hushed midsummer night. The hum of busy footsteps had long since died away, and the twinkling lights had faded, one by one, from the huge bulk of the metropolis. To the lonely night watcher, there was enough of light in the mild effulgence of the moon to distinguish whether the pale invalid woke or slumbered; whether the repose of the dead was inviolate, or invaded by noisome things that move abroad only in darkness. And midway between life and death, so motionless that you would say she belonged to the dark realm of the latter, so lovely that the former still seemed to claim her own, lay the earth-born love of the painter, with her ethereal essence yet hovering near the beloved of her soul. The painter sat by the bedside, with her thin, pale hand clasped in his. He had listened to her last accents; he had heard her call him, in the fervor of her affection, "her beautiful, her own;" and he knew that, ere the unseen clock had recorded the death of another hour, the feeble pulse that fluttered beneath his fingers would have ceased to beat. Yet, with all this, his eyes were tearless, and his heart less heavy than in those dark dreams which had foreshadowed this event. In weal or woe, his prophetic dreams seemed even more impressive than the realities which followed them.
It appeared as if there were a magnetic influence in the touch of the dying hand; that the soul of Esther, bathed in the dawning light of the better world, had communicated a portion of its brightness to his own. So the hours wore on; the feeble pulse yet beat, but fainter and fainter. At last, through the open window which commanded a view of the east, the brightening streaks of dawn appeared; in the leaves of a solitary tree, that stood amid a wilderness of brick hard by, was heard the faint, tremulous twitter of a bird waiting but a ruddier ray to launch forth upon his dewy pinions. A smile, like a ray of light, dawned upon the countenance of Esther. She pointed to a shadowy alcove in the chamber, and the painter's eye, following the indication, detected the figure of his mysterious and prophetic visitor. But the countenance of the unknown was milder, softer; a veil of brightness had fallen upon the more repulsive lineaments, and when the broad daylight beamed into the apartment, his image melted into the ray, like a rain-drop into a sunny sea. A thrill ran through the painter's frame; he gazed upon the face of Esther; it was that of death.