e Basil's, that's always staring on
the doorstep awfully. Oh, why did I meet him! why did I marry him! oh,
why! why!"

She uttered the last words in slow, measured cadence--the horrible
mockery of a chaunt which she used to play to us at North Villa, on
Sunday evenings. Then her voice sank again; her articulation thickened,
and grew indistinct. It was like the change from darkness to daylight,
in the sight of sleepless eyes, to hear her only murmuring now, after
hearing her last terrible words.

The weary night-time passed on. Longer and longer grew the intervals
of silence between the scattered noises from the streets; less and less
frequent were the sounds of distant carriage-wheels, and the echoing
rapid footsteps of late pleasure-seekers hurrying home. At last, the
heavy tramp of the policeman going his rounds, alone disturbed the
silence of the early morning hours. Still, the voice from the bed
muttered incessantly; but now, in drowsy, languid tones: still, Mr.
Bernard did not return: still the father of the dying girl never came,
never obeyed the letter which summoned him for the last time to her
side.

(There was yet one more among the absent--one from whose approach
the death-bed must be kept sacred; one, whose evil presence was to be
dreaded as a pestilence and a scourge. Mannion!--where was Mannion?)

I sat by the window, resigned to wait in loneliness till the end came,
watching mechanically the vacant eyes that ever watched me--when,
suddenly, the face of Margaret seemed to fade out of my sight. I started
and looked round. The candle, which I had placed at the opposite end of
the room, had burnt down without my noticing it, and was now expiring
in the socket. I ran to light the fresh candle which lay on the table
by its side, but was too late. The wick flickered its last; the room was
left in darkness.

While I felt among the different objects under my hands for a box of
matches: Margaret's voice strengthened again.

"Innocent! innocent!" I heard her cry mournfully through the darkness.
"I'll swear I'm innocent, and father is sure to swear it too. Innocent
Margaret! Oh, me! what innocence!"

She repeated these words over and over again, till the hearing them
seemed to bewilder all my senses. I hardly knew what I touched.
Suddenly, my searching hands stopped of themselves, I could not tell
why. Was there some change in the room? Was there more air in it, as if
a door had been opened? Was there someth