. Still an illusion. The silken curtains had
waved a second time betwixt the dead face and the moonlight as another
fair young girl unclosed the door and glided ghostlike to the bedside.
There the two maidens stood, both beautiful, with the pale beauty of
the dead between them. But she who had first entered was proud and
stately, and the other a soft and fragile thing.

"Away!" cried the lofty one. "Thou hadst him living; the dead is
mine."

"Thine!" returned the other, shuddering. "Well hast thou spoken; the
dead is thine."

The proud girl started and stared into her face with a ghastly look,
but a wild-and mournful expression passed across the features of the
gentle one, and, weak and helpless, she sank down on the bed, her head
pillowed beside that of the corpse and her hair mingling with his dark
locks. A creature of hope and joy, the first draught of sorrow had
bewildered her.

"Edith!" cried her rival.

Edith groaned as with a sudden compression of the heart, and, removing
her cheek from the dead youth's pillow, she stood upright, fearfully
encountering the eyes of the lofty girl.

"Wilt thou betray me?" said the latter, calmly.

"Till the dead bid me speak I will be silent," answered Edith. "Leave
us alone together. Go and live many years, and then return and tell me
of thy life. He too will be here. Then, if thou tellest of sufferings
more than death, we will both forgive thee."

"And what shall be the token?" asked the proud girl, as if her heart
acknowledged a meaning in these wild words.

"This lock of hair," said Edith, lifting one of the dark clustering
curls that lay heavily on the dead man's brow.

The two maidens joined their hands over the bosom of the corpse and
appointed a day and hour far, far in time to come for their next
meeting in that chamber. The statelier girl gave one deep look at the
motionless countenance and departed, yet turned again and trembled ere
she closed the door, almost believing that her dead lover frowned upon
her. And Edith, too! Was not her white form fading into the moonlight?
Scorning her own weakness, she went forth and perceived that a negro
slave was waiting in the passage with a waxlight, which he held
between her face and his own and regarded her, as she thought, with an
ugly expression of merriment. Lifting his torch on high, the slave
lighted her down the staircase and undid the portal of the mansion.
The young clergyman of the town had just ascended the