slightly crimsoned with a tell-tale
blush. Her fluttering heart refused to retain its secret.

Henry expressed his grief at the melancholy event which had shrouded her
in the weeds of mourning,--not in words alone, but his sorrow for the
death of a kind friend was more eloquently told in his countenance.

Jaspar was chagrined at this meeting, and his awkward attempts to be
civil to Henry were entire failures. This was an event for which he was
not prepared,--the consequences of which filled him with anxiety. He
knew that in Henry his wronged niece would have a zealous
advocate;--not a superannuated priest, but a young man whose blood was
warm, and whose soul was full of energy. True, he reasoned, the young
officer was powerless as a diplomatist. Ho as yet knew nothing of the
will, or of Emily's degraded position. Henry knew the feelings and
character of his brother, and would be the last one to believe the
infamous statement of the will. What the father might have said to him
in regard to her he knew not. As guilt always does, he imagined a
thousand dangers, and saw with a clear vision the real ones besides.

At the tea-table there was little conversation beside the ordinary
courtesies of the occasion. Jaspar said but little.

The guilty never feel any security in the enjoyment of ill-gotten
wealth. The murderer is haunted by the ghost of his victim. The cries of
the widow and the orphan continually ring in the ear of the avaricious.
The fear of discovery haunted Jaspar. Although he saw no probability of
his villany being exposed, the fear of discovery troubled him day and
night. Revengeful and cruel, dauntless and bold, as he had ever been,
the present seemed a crisis in his life. He had accomplished the climax
of villany, and as he had racked his powers of invention for the means
of attaining his purpose, he now taxed them for the means of concealing
it. The insecurity of his position was so tedious, that he sought, as
the tempest-tost mariner seeks the quiet haven, to fortify it, so that
he might be at rest from the tormenting doubts which assailed him. Vain
hope! there is no rest for the wicked. Plots and schemes ran through his
mind; but they afforded no satisfaction. There was only one event which
promised the least mitigation of his mental sufferings, and this was the
death of his niece. Black as he was at heart, he shrank from her
murder,--not at the deed, but at the terrible consequences to him which
might