luded to from
old Corbet, immediately transmitted to her a letter of hope and
encouragement, in which he stated that the object he had alluded to was
achieved, and that he would take care to place such documents before her
father, as must cause even him to forbid the bans. This letter, however,
never reached her. Neither did a similar communication from Mrs.
Mainwaring, who after three successive attempts to see either her or
her father, was forced at last to give up all hope of preventing the
marriage. She seemed, indeed, to have been fated.

In the meantime, the stranger, having, as he imagined, relieved Lucy's
mind from her dreaded union with Dunroe, and left the further and
more complete disclosure of that young nobleman's position to Mrs.
Mainwaring, provided himself with competent legal authority to claim the
person of unfortunate Fenton. It is unnecessary to describe his journey
to the asylum in which the wretched young man was placed; it is enough
to say that he arrived there at nine o'clock in the morning, accompanied
by old Corbet and three officers of justice, who remained in the
carriage; and on asking to see the proprietor, was shown into a parlor,
where he found that worthy gentleman reading a newspaper.

This fellow was one of those men who are remarkable for thick, massive,
and saturnine features. At a first glance he was not at all ill-looking;
but, on examining his beetle brows, which met in a mass of black thick
hair across his face, and on watching the dull, selfish, cruel eyes
that they hung over--dead as they were to every generous emotion, and
incapable of kindling even at cruelty itself--it was impossible for any
man in the habit of observing nature closely not to feel that a brutal
ruffian, obstinate, indurated, and unscrupulous, was before him. His
forehead was low but broad, and the whole shape of his head such as
would induce an intelligent phrenologist to pronounce him at once a
thief and a murderer.

The stranger, after a survey or two, felt his blood boil at the
contemplation of his very visage, which was at once plausible and
diabolical in expression. After some preliminary chat the latter said:

"Your establishment, sir, is admirably situated here. It is remote and
isolated; and these, I suppose, are advantages?"

"Why, yes, sir," replied the doctor, "the further we remove our patients
from human society, the better. The exhibition of reason has, in
general, a bad effect upon the in