one, two--and so it goes on; it cannot beat beyond
two! Oh, God! in what pain it is before it breaks!"

She now returned to the chair from which she had risen, at the sound of
Peverell's voice. He approached nearer; and (with a view rather to draw
her gently from her own thoughts, than from any desire that she should
leave his house,) he asked her "if she would go home?"

"Yes," she replied; "bear with me yet a little while, and I'll go. It is
near the time I promised Marian, when last I kissed her wintry cheek, as
she lay shrouded in her coffin; and I may not fail. Lord! Lord! what a
troubled and worthless world this seems to me now! A week ago, and the sun,
and the moon, and the stars, and the green earth, and all that was upon it,
were dear to mine eyes; and I should have wept to look my last at them!
But now, I behold nothing it contains, save my Marian's grave! You will
see _me_ laid in it, for pity's sake--won't you?"

"Ay," said Peverell, "but that will be when I am gray, and thinking of my
own: so, cheer up. He that shall toll the bell for thee, now sleeps in his
cradle, I'll warrant."

She beckoned Peverell to her, and taking his hand, she again placed it on
her heart. A sad, melancholy smile played for a moment across her pale
wrinkled face, and her glazed eyes kindled into a fleeting expressing of
frightful gladness, as she feebly exclaimed, "Do you feel? One!--one!--one!
--and hardly that--I breathe only from here," she continued, pointing to
her throat. "Feel!--feel!--one!--one!--another!--how I gasp--see!--see--"

She ceased to speak; the hand which retained Peverell's relaxed its
hold--her head dropped--one long-drawn sigh was heaved--and poor Madge
resigned a being touched with sympathies and feelings not often found
in natures of nobler quality, in the world's catalogue of nobility. If,
among the thousand doors which death holds open for mortal man to pass
through, ere he puts on immortality, there be one, the rarest of them
all, for broken hearts, this hapless creature found it. A self accusing
spirit bowed her to the earth, with the sharpest of all griefs--a
mother's anguish for an only child--lost to her, as gamesters lose
fortunes--thrown away by her own hand.

* * * * *

FITZMAURICE THE MAGICIAN.

"_I have lived three hundred years!_ In that time--in all that time, I
have never seen the glorious sun descend, but followed still its rolling
course through t