itation, "Mrs. Sylvester dead?"

"Yes sir," returned the old and trusty servant, with something like a
sob in his voice. "She went out riding this morning behind a pair of
borrowed horses--and being unused to Michael's way of driving, they ran
away and she was thrown from the carriage and instantly killed."

"And Miss Fairchild?"

"She didn't go with her. Mrs. Sylvester was alone."

"Horrible, horrible! Where is my uncle, can I see him?"

"I don't know, sir," the man returned with a strange look of anxiety.
"Mr. Sylvester is feeling very bad, sir. He has shut himself up in his
room and none of his servants dare disturb him, sir."

"I should, however, like him to know I am here. In what room shall I
find him?"

"In the little one, sir, at the top of the house. It has a curious lock
on the door; you will know it by that."

"Very well. Please be in the hall when I come down; I may want to give
you some orders."

The old servant bowed and Bertram hastened with hushed steps to ascend
the stairs. At the first platform he paused. What is there in a house of
death, of sudden death especially, that draws a veil of spectral
unreality over each familiar object! Behind that door now inexorably
closed before him, lay without doubt the shrouded form of her who but a
few short hours before, had dazzled the eyes of men and made envious the
hearts of women with her imposing beauty! No such quiet then reigned
over the spot filled by her presence. As the vision of a dream returns,
he saw her again in all her splendor. Never a brow in all the great hall
shone more brightly beneath its sparkling diamonds; never a lip in the
whole vast throng curled with more self-complacent pride, or melted into
a more alluring smile, than that of her who now lay here, a marble image
beneath the eye of day. It was as if a flowery field had split beneath
the dancing foot of some laughing siren. One moment your gaze is upon
the swaying voluptuous form, the half-shut beguiling eye, the white
out-reaching arms upon whose satin surface a thousand loves seem
perching; the next you stare horror-stricken upon the closing jaws of an
awful pit, with the flash of something bright in your eyes, and the
sense of a hideous noiseless rush in which earth and heaven appear to
join, sink and be swallowed! Bertram felt his heart grow sick. Moving
on, he passed the bronze image of Luxury lying half asleep on its bed of
crumpled roses. Hideous mockery! What has luxury