send it!" said Walter, sighing deeply.

"But at the worst," continued the Earl, pressing his hand in parting,
"if you should persist in your resolution to leave the country, write to
me, and I can furnish you with an honourable and stirring occasion for
doing so.--Farewell."

While Time was thus advancing towards the fatal day, it was graving deep
ravages within the pure breast of Madeline Lester. She had borne up, as
we have seen, for some time, against the sudden blow that had shivered
her young hopes, and separated her by so awful a chasm from the side of
Aram; but as week after week, month after month rolled on, and he still
lay in prison, and the horrible suspense of ignominy and death still
hung over her, then gradually her courage began to fail, and her heart
to sink. Of all the conditions to which the heart is subject, suspense
is the one that most gnaws, and cankers into, the frame. One little
month of that suspense, when it involves death, we are told, in a very
remarkable work lately published by an eye-witness. [Note: See Mr.
Wakefield's work on 'The Punishment of Death.'] is sufficient to
plough fixed lines and furrows in the face of a convict of
five-and-twenty--sufficient to dash the brown hair with grey, and to
bleach the grey to white. And this suspense--suspense of this nature,
for more than eight whole months, had Madeline to endure!

About the end of the second month the effect upon her health grew
visible. Her colour, naturally delicate as the hues of the pink shell or
the youngest rose, faded into one marble whiteness, which again, as time
proceeded, flushed into that red and preternatural hectic, which once
settled, rarely yields its place but to the colours of the grave. Her
flesh shrank from its rounded and noble proportions. Deep hollows traced
themselves beneath eyes which yet grew even more lovely as they grew
less serenely bright. The blessed Sleep sunk not upon her brain with its
wonted and healing dews. Perturbed dreams, that towards dawn succeeded
the long and weary vigil of the night, shook her frame even more than
the anguish of the day in these dreams one frightful vision--a
crowd--a scaffold--and the pale majestic face of her lover, darkened by
unutterable pangs of pride and sorrow, were for ever present before her.
Till now, she and Ellinor had always shared the same bed: this Madeline
would not now suffer. In vain Ellinor wept and pleaded. "No," said
Madeline, with a hollow voice