lly upon her lover's name; and in tender, beseeching
accents, that should have melted even the stubbornest hearts, did she
express her soul's conviction that he loved her still.

The very repetition of the name of Charles Holland seemed to be galling
to Sir Francis Varney. He made a gesture of impatience, as she again
uttered it, and then, stepping forward, he stood within a pace of where
she sat, and in a fearfully distinct voice he said,--

"Flora Bannerworth, awake! awake! and look upon me, although the sight
blast and drive you to despair. Awake! awake!"

It was not the sound of the voice which aroused her from that strange
slumber. It is said that those who sleep in that eccentric manner, are
insensible to sounds, but that the lightest touch will arouse them in an
instant; and so it was in this case, for Sir Francis Varney, as he
spoke, laid upon the hand of Flora two of his cold, corpse-like looking
fingers. A shriek burst from her lips, and although the confusion of her
memory and conceptions was immense, yet she was awake, and the
somnambulistic trance had left her.

"Help, help!" she cried. "Gracious Heavens! Where am I?"

Varney spoke not, but he spread out his long, thin arms in such a manner
that he seemed almost to encircle her, while he touched her not, so that
escape became a matter of impossibility, and to attempt to do so, must
have been to have thrown herself into his hideous embrace.

She could obtain but a single view of the face and figure of him who
opposed her progress, but, slight as that view was, it more than
sufficed. The very extremity of fear came across her, and she sat like
one paralysed; the only evidence of existence she gave consisting in the
words,--

"The vampyre--the vampyre!"

"Yes," said Varney, "the vampyre. You know me, Flora
Bannerworth--Varney, the vampyre; your midnight guest at that feast of
blood. I am the vampyre. Look upon me well; shrink not from my gaze. You
will do well not to shun me, but to speak to me in such a shape that I
may learn to love you."

Flora shook as in a convulsion, and she looked as white as any marble
statue.

"This is horrible!" she said. "Why does not Heaven grant me the death I
pray for?"

"Hold!" said Varney. "Dress not up in the false colours of the
imagination that which in itself is sufficiently terrific to need none
of the allurements of romance. Flora Bannerworth, you are
persecuted--persecuted by me, the vampyre. It is my fate