“My uncle—my father,”—shrieked the Ladye Annabel, rushing to the bedside—“Look not so wildly, gaze not so sternly upon me. Speak, my uncle, oh, speak!”
Her utterance failed, and an indistinct murmur broke from her lips. Her hands ran hurriedly over the brow of the warrior—it was cold with beaded drops of moisture. She bent hastily over the form of Lord Julian, she imprinted a kiss on his parted lips. She kissed the lips of the dead!
Then the tapestry, the hangings of the Red Chamber, the couch, with its ghastly corse, all swam round her in a fearful dance, and the Ladye Annabel fell insensible on the floor.
The great bell of the Castle of Albarone tolled forth the hour of noon. The shadow of death had been flung across the dial-plate in the castle-yard.
While the thunder-like tones of the bell went swinging and quivering, and echoing among the old castle halls, a footstep was heard without the Red Chamber, and the door was flung suddenly open.
A young Cavalier, with a face marked by frank, open features, locks of rich gold, and an eye of blue, while his handsome form was clad in a gay dress of velvet, entered the apartment, and strode with hurried steps to the couch.
He cast one look at the face of the corse, marked by the ghastly grimace of death; he cast one quick and hasty glance at the form of the Ladye Annabel, thrown insensible along the floor of stone, and then he covered his face with his trembling hands, and his manly form was convulsed by a shuddering tremor, that shook the folds of his blue doublet, as though every sinew writhed in agony beneath the gay apparel.
The heavy sob, which unutterable anguish alone can bring from the heart of a proud man, broke on the deep silence of the room, and the big heavy tear-drops of man’s despair came trickling between the clasped fingers, pressed over his countenance.
“He is dead—my father—he is dead!”
He mastered the first terrible impulse of grief, and raised the swooning maiden from the floor.