“The hopes we had again entertained by her sudden question, seemingly so rational, were the next instant dissipated, by her dropping her hand, and sinking back upon the pillows, in a state approaching to insensibility. Need I delay? From that stupor, gradually becoming deeper and more profound, she never awoke; or rather awoke only in that better world where she found relief from all her sorrows, and where, if earthly suffering, or earthly purity can avail aught, she is now one of the brightest of the redeemed.
“Ah! you may well shed tears. It were enough to make angels weep, that death-bed! Night and day, in illness or health, here or in another continent, that closing scene of her life has been present to me, urging me on to avenge her wrongs.
“We buried her. Far away from the spot where she died, amid the green old hills of her birth, and in the quiet, little church-yard where her father and mother slept, we laid her down to her rest; and my last prayer is that I too may be buried there, side and side with that sweet suffering angel.
“I was from that moment her Avenger. I sought out her waiting woman again, and learning from her all the information she could give me respecting the retreat to which Conway had fled, I set out in his pursuit. But her information was too scanty to avail me aught. Conway had left her money enough to bear his victim to P——, and then, alarmed at the catastrophe, fled she knew not whither. Once or twice since, however, he had remitted her small sums of money by mail, enjoining on her continued secrecy. The letters were post-marked New York.
“Thither I went. But all my enquiries were useless. After a search of a month I was no nearer to the attainment of my object, than on the day when I first set forth in pursuit of Conway.
“But did my zeal abate? How could it when that death-bed scene was ringing its cry for vengeance night and day in my ears? No. I had stood beside the grave of Isabel, and vowed to be her Avenger: I had repeated that vow, night and morning since; and I would spend the last cent of my fortune, and go to the uttermost end of the earth, but what I would yet fulfil the oath.
“At length I obtained a clue to Conway’s retreat. He had sailed from New York five months before for London, under an assumed name. I now felt sure of my prey.
“On my arrival at that vast metropolis, I instituted a cautious enquiry after his present abode, which I felt certain would ultimately place him within my grasp. Meantime I began a course of daily practice at a neighboring pistol-gallery, and soon became so proficient that I could split a ball, at twelve paces, nine times out of ten, upon the edge of a knife. Nor did I neglect fencing. I became by constant attention an invincible swordsman.
“But months, aye! years elapsed, and still he evaded my grasp. He hurried from one land to another, under a dozen disguises, but though delayed by my anxiety to be perfectly certain of the road he had adopted, I was ever like the blood-hound on his path. Fly where he would, the AVENGER OF BLOOD was behind him. Thrice he flew to Paris, once he hurried to Rome, twice he hid himself in the Russian capital, four times he visited England under different names, two several times he crossed and re-crossed the Atlantic, and once for nearly a whole year, during which he went on a voyage to Calcutta, I almost lost sight of him. But I recovered the clue at his return. Years had only whetted my appetite for revenge. My determination was when I met him, to goad him by insult into an honorable encounter, and if this could not be done, to shoot him in the street like a dog.
“Fortune favored me at length. It was scarcely a month after his return from the East Indies, when I learned that three days before he had set out for Paris. Thither, like the angel of death, I pursued him.