od apart,
separated from Lady Eleanore by the width of the room, but eying her
with such keen sagacity that Captain Langford involuntarily gave him
credit for the discovery of some deep secret.

"You appear to be smitten, after all, with the charms of this queenly
maiden," said he, hoping thus to draw forth the physician's hidden
knowledge.

"God forbid!" answered Dr. Clarke, with a grave smile; "and if you be
wise, you will put up the same prayer for yourself. Woe to those who
shall be smitten by this beautiful Lady Eleanore! But yonder stands
the governor, and I have a word or two for his private ear.
Good-night!" He accordingly advanced to Governor Shute and addressed
him in so low a tone that none of the bystanders could catch a word of
what he said, although the sudden change of His Excellency's hitherto
cheerful visage betokened that the communication could be of no
agreeable import. A very few moments afterward it was announced to the
guests that an unforeseen circumstance rendered it necessary to put a
premature close to the festival.

The ball at the province-house supplied a topic of conversation for
the colonial metropolis for some days after its occurrence, and might
still longer have been the general theme, only that a subject of
all-engrossing interest thrust it for a time from the public
recollection. This was the appearance of a dreadful epidemic which in
that age, and long before and afterward, was wont to slay its hundreds
and thousands on both sides of the Atlantic. On the occasion of which
we speak it was distinguished by a peculiar virulence, insomuch that
it has left its traces--its pitmarks, to use an appropriate figure--on
the history of the country, the affairs of which were thrown into
confusion by its ravages. At first, unlike its ordinary course, the
disease seemed to confine itself to the higher circles of society,
selecting its victims from among the proud, the well-born and the
wealthy, entering unabashed into stately chambers and lying down with
the slumberers in silken beds. Some of the most distinguished guests
of the province-house--even those whom the haughty Lady Eleanore
Rochcliffe had deemed not unworthy of her favor--were stricken by this
fatal scourge. It was noticed with an ungenerous bitterness of feeling
that the four gentlemen--the Virginian, the British officer, the young
clergyman and the governor's secretary--who had been her most devoted
attendants on the evening of t