l--he will--he will. Does he not feel pity? Oh yes, in a thousand,
thousand cases he is the friend of the miserable. Death the Consoler!
Oh from how many an aching brow does he take away the pain for ever? How
many sorrows does he soothe into rest that is never broken!--from how
many hearts like mine, does he pluck the arrows that fester in them, and
bids them feel pain no more! In his house, that house appointed for all
living--what calmness and peace is there? How sweet and tranquil is the
bed which he smoothes down for the unhappy; there the wicked cease
from troubling, and the weary are at rest. Then give me Death the
Consoler?--Death the Consoler!"

A sense of relief and wild exultation beamed from her countenance,
on uttering the last words, and she rose up and walked about the room
wringing her hands, yet smiling at the idea of being relieved by Death
the Consoler! It is not indeed unusual to witness in deranged persons,
an unconscious impression of pain and misery, accompanied at the same
time by a vague sense of unreal happiness--that is, a happiness which,
whilst it balances the latent conviction of their misery does not,
however, ultimately remove it. This probably constitutes that pleasure
in madness, which, it is said, none but mad persons know.

At length she stood, and, for a long time seemed musing upon various and
apparently contrasted topics, for she sometimes smiled as a girl at play,
and sometimes relapsed into darkness of mood and pain, and incoherency.
But after passing through these rapid changes for many minutes, she
suddenly exclaimed in a low but earnest voice, "Where is he?"

"Where is who, love?" said her mother.

"Where is he?--why does he not come?--something more than usual must
prevent him, or he would not stay away so long from 'his own Jane
Sinclair.' But I forgot; bless me, how feeble my memory is growing!
Why this is the hour of our appointment, and I will be late unless I
hurry--for who could give so gentle and affectionate a being as Charles
pain?"

She immediately put on her bonnet, and was about to go abroad, when
her father, gently laying his hand upon her arm, said, in a kind but
admonitory voice, in which was blended a slightly perceptible degree of
parental authority--

"My daughter, surely you will not go out--you are unwell."

She started slightly, paused, and looked as if trying to remember
something that she had forgotten. The struggle, however, was vain--her
recol