duration, and then, faintly, Flora
managed to say,--

"Help! help! Oh, help me, Heaven!"

Varney made a gesture of impatience, as he said,--

"Heaven works no special matters now. Flora Bannerworth, if you have as
much intellect as your nobility and beauty would warrant the world in
supposing, you will listen to me."

"I--I hear," said Flora, as she still, dragging the chair with her,
increased the distance between them.

"'Tis well. You are now more composed."

She fixed her eyes upon the face of Varney with a shudder. There could
be no mistake. It was the same which, with the strange, glassy looking
eyes, had glared upon her on that awful night of the storm when she was
visited by the vampyre. And Varney returned that gaze unflinchingly
There was a hideous and strange contortion of his face now as he said,--

"You are beautiful. The most cunning statuary might well model some rare
work of art from those rounded limbs, that were surely made to bewitch
the gazer. Your skin rivals the driven snow--what a face of loveliness,
and what a form of enchantment."

She did not speak, but a thought came across her mind, which at once
crimsoned her cheek--she knew she had fainted on the first visit of the
vampyre, and now he, with a hideous reverence, praised beauties which he
might have cast his demoniac eyes over at such a time.

"You understand me," he said. "Well, let that pass. I am something
allied to humanity yet."

"Speak your errand," gasped Flora, "or come what may, I scream for help
to those who will not be slow to render it."

"I know it."

"You know I will scream?"

"No; you will hear me. I know they would not be slow to tender help to
you, but you will not call for it; I will present to you no necessity."

"Say on--say on."

"You perceive I do not attempt to approach you; my errand is one of
peace."

"Peace from you! Horrible being, if you be really what even now my
appalled imagination shrinks from naming you, would not even to you
absolute annihilation be a blessing?"

"Peace, peace. I came not here to talk on such a subject. I must be
brief, Flora Bannerworth, for time presses. I do not hate you. Wherefore
should I? You are young, and you are beautiful, and you bear a name
which should command, and does command, some portion of my best regard."

"There is a portrait," said Flora, "in this house."

"No more--no more. I know what you would say."

"It is yours."

"The house, and all withi