e
nothing to relate to you."

"Nay, you have already listened sufficiently to me to give me a hope
that I had awakened some of the humanity that was in your nature. Do
not, Sir Francis Varney, crush that hope, even as it was budding forth;
not for my own sake do I ask you for revelations; that may,
perhaps--must be painful for you; but for the sake of Flora Bannerworth,
to whom you owe abundance of reparation."

"No, no."

"In the name of all that is great, and good, and just, I call upon you
for justice."

"What have I to do with such an invocation? Utter such a sentiment to
men who, like yourself, are invested with the reality as well as the
outward show of human nature."

"Nay, Sir Francis Varney, now you belie yourself. You have passed
through a long, and, perchance, a stormy life. Can you look back upon
your career, and find no reminiscences of the past that shall convince
you that you are of the great family of man, and have had abundance of
human feelings and of human affections?"

"Peace, peace!"

"Nay, Sir Francis Varney, I will take your word, and if you will lay
your hand upon your heart, and tell me truly that you never felt what it
was to love--to have all feeling, all taste, and all hope of future joy,
concentrated in one individual, I will despair, and leave you. If you
will tell me that never, in your whole life, you have felt for any fair
and glorious creature, as I now feel for Flora Bannerworth, a being for
whom you could have sacrificed not only existence, but all the hopes of
a glorious future that bloom around it--if you will tell me, with the
calm, dispassionate aspect of truth, that you have held yourself aloof
from such human feelings, I will no longer press you to a disclosure
which I shall bring no argument to urge."

The agitation of Sir Francis Varney's countenance was perceptible, and
Charles Holland was about to speak again, when, striking him upon the
breast with his clinched hand, the vampyre checked him, saying--

"Do you wish to drive me mad, that you thus, from memory's hidden cells,
conjure up images of the past?"

"Then there are such images to conjure up--there are such shadows only
sleeping, but which require only, as you did even now, but a touch to
awaken them to life and energy. Oh, Sir Francis Varney, do not tell me
that you are not human."

The vampyre made a furious gesture, as if he would have attacked Charles
Holland; but then he sank nearly to the floor, as