that to him? Lord Frederic would have been
the heir to a grand title and to vast estates;--but how would he have
been the better for that? The old lord who was lying there so sick in
the next room might probably have sunk into his grave with a broken
heart. The Marquis had of late been harsh to him; but there did come
to him an idea at the present moment that he had for thirty years
eaten the sick man's bread. And the young man would have been sent
without a moment's notice to meet his final doom! Of what nature
that might have been, the wretched man lying there did not dare even
to make a picture in his imagination. It was a matter which he had
sedulously and successfully dismissed from all his thoughts. It was
of the body lying out there in the cold, not of the journey which
the winged soul might make, that he unwillingly drew a picture to
himself. He conceived how he himself, in the prosecution of the plan
which he had formed, would have been forced to have awakened the
house, and to tell of the deed, and to assist in carrying the body to
what resting-place might have been found for it. There he would have
had to enact a part of which he had, a few hours since, told himself
that he would be capable, but in attempting which he was now sure
that he would have succumbed to the difficulties of the struggle. Who
would have broken the news to the father? Who would have attempted
to speak the first word of vain consolation? Who would have flown to
the lady's door up-stairs and have informed her that death was in
the house--and have given her to understand that the eldest of her
darlings was the heir? It would have been for him to do it all; for
him with a spirit weighed down to the ground by that terrible burden
with which the doing of such a deed would have loaded it. He would
certainly have revealed himself in the struggle!

But why should he allow his mind to be perplexed with such thoughts?
No such deed had been done. There had been no murder. The young man
was there now in the house, light-hearted after his walk; full of
life and youthful energy. Why should he be troubled with such waking
dreams as these? Must it be so with him always, for the rest of his
life, only because he had considered how a thing might best be done?
He heard a footstep in a distant passage, and a door closed, and then
again all was silent. Was there not cause to him for joy in the young
man's presence? If his speculations had been wicked, was th