"Yon deceiver hath doubtless thrown thee into the river, and supposing thou wert dead, he designs me to supply thy place; to carry on the dark mystery of iniquity, a glimpse of which hath already been revealed."

"Would that I had been left to perish,—that my doom were ended. Avarice, ambition! how enslaved are your victims. How have I longed for my miserable cottage, my poverty, my obscurity,—cold and pinching want, but a quiet conscience to season my scanty meal. I bartered all for gold, for fame and—misery! A cruel bondage! compared to which I could envy the meanest thing that crawls on this abject earth. In my trance, I dreamed of green fields and babbling streams; of my brethren, my play-mates, my days of innocence and sport, when all was freshness and anticipation,—life one bright vista beyond, opening to sunny regions of rapture and delight. And now, what am I?—a wretch, degraded, undone,—a spectacle of misery, beyond what human thought can conceive. Doomed to years, ages it may be, of woe,—to scenes of horror such as tongue ne'er told, and even imagination might scarce endure, and my miseries but a foretaste of that hereafter!"

Here the guilty victim writhed in a paroxysm of agony; his veins swollen almost to bursting. Whether real or imaginary, whether a victim to insanity, or of some supernatural agent, its influence was not the less terrible in its effects. Starting suddenly from his grovelling posture, he cried, fixing his eyes on De Vessey with a searching glance,—

"What brings thee hither?"

"Leonora is in jeopardy by your spells. I seek her deliverance."

"She is beyond rescue. Leonora da Rimini is the skeleton's bride!"

Here the painter threw such a repulsive glance towards the cabinet, that the cavalier shrank back as though expecting some grisly spectre from its portals; yet, himself the subject of an extraordinary fascination, he could not withdraw his gaze.

"Fly, fly, or thou art lost! My tormentor will be here anon,—I would have saved her, and he fixed his burning gripe here, I feel it still; not a night passes that he comes not hither. Away! shouldest thou meet him, thy doom is fixed, and for ever. I would not that another fell into his toils. Couldest thou know, ay, but as a whisper, the secrets of this prison-house, thy spirit would melt, thy flesh would shrink as though the hot wind of the desert had passed over. What I have endured, and what I must endure, are alike unutterable."

"Thy keeper comes not to-night. He hath sent me to this chamber of death instead. He knows not thou art alive."

"Thee!—To—But I must not reveal; my tongue cleaves to my mouth. Nay, nay, it cannot be; none but a fiend could do his behest. Away! for thy life, away!"