how my best years had been devoted to advance them--to ennoble
their cause in the lying page of History! All this was not thought of:
my life was reduced to two epochs--that of use to them--that not. During
the first, I was honoured; during the last, I was left to starve--to
rot! Who freed me from prison?--who protects me now? One of my
'party'--my 'noble friends'--my 'honourable, right honourable friends'?
No! a tradesman whom I once served in my holyday, and who alone, of all
the world, forgets me not in my penance. You see gratitude, friendship,
spring up only in middle life; they grow not in high stations!

"And now, come nearer, for my voice falters, and I would have these
words distinctly heard. Child, girl as you are--you I consider pledged
to record, to fulfil my desire--my curse! Lay your hand on mine: swear
that through life to death,--swear! You speak not! repeat my words after
me:"--Constance obeyed:--"through life to death; through good, through
ill, through weakness, through power, you will devote yourself to
humble, to abase that party from whom your father received ingratitude,
mortification, and death! Swear that you will not marry a poor
and powerless man, who cannot minister to the ends of that solemn
retribution I invoke! Swear that you will seek to marry from amongst the
great; not through love, not through ambition, but through hate, and
for revenge! You will seek to rise that you may humble those who have
betrayed me! In the social walks of life you will delight to gall their
vanities in state intrigues, you will embrace every measure that can
bring them to their eternal downfall. For this great end you will pursue
all means. What! you hesitate? Repeat, repeat, repeat!--You will lie,
cringe, fawn, and think vice not vice, if it bring you one jot nearer to
Revenge! With this curse on my foes, I entwine my blessing, dear, dear
Constance, on you,--you, who have nursed, watched, all but saved me!
God, God bless you, my child!" And Vernon burst into tears.

It was two hours after this singular scene, and exactly in the third
hour of morning, that Vernon woke from a short and troubled sleep.
The grey dawn (for the time was the height of summer) already began
to labour through the shades and against the stars of night. A raw and
comfortless chill crept over the earth, and saddened the air in the
death-chamber. Constance sat by her father's bed, her eyes fixed upon
him, and her cheek more wan than ever by