they are successful, the
cruel sentence may be pronounced, but it will be over my grave. I could
never live to witness the sufferings of my darling and innocent child.
My lamp of life is already all but exhausted--this would extinguish it
forever."

He then raised his head, and after wiping away the tears, spoke to his
son as follows:

"Dunroe, be advised by me; reform your life; set your house in order,
for you know not, you see not, the cloud which is likely to burst over
our heads."

"I don't understand you, my lord."

"I know you do not, nor is it my intention that you should for the
present; but if you are wise, you will be guided by my instructions and
follow my advice."

When Dunroe left him, which he did after some formal words of
encouragement and comfort, to which the old man paid little attention,
turning toward the door, which his son on going out had shut, he looked
as if his eye followed him beyond the limits of the room, and exclaimed:

"Alas! why was I not born above the ordinary range of the domestic
affections? Yet so long as I have my darling child--who is all
affection--why should I complain on this account? Alas, my Maria, it is
now that thou art avenged for the neglect you experienced at my hands,
and for the ambition that occasioned it. Cursed ambition! Did the
coronet I gained by my neglect of you, beloved object of my first and
only affection, console my heart under the cries of conscience,
or stifle the grief which returned for you, when that ambition was
gratified? Ah, that false and precipitate step! How much misery has it
not occasioned me since I awoke from my dream! Your gentle spirit seemed
to haunt me through life, but ever with that melancholy smile of tender
and affectionate reproach with which your eye always encountered mine
while living. And thou, wicked woman, what has thy act accomplished, if
it should be successful? What has thy fraudulent contrivance effected?
Sorrow to one who was ever thy friend--grief, shame, and degradation to
the innocent!"

Whilst the old man indulged in these painful and melancholy reflections,
his son, on the other hand, was not without his own speculations. On
retiring to his dressing-room, he began to ponder over the admonitory if
not prophetic words of his father.

"What the deuce can the matter be?" he exclaimed, surveying himself in
the glass; "a good style of face that, in the meantime. Gad, I knew she
would surrender in form, and I was