as a son to a
mother, it bent over her; its spectral hands of light rested upon her in
caressing and benediction; its shadowy fall of hair, once blanched by
the anguish of living and loving, floated on her throbbing brow; and
resignation and comfort not of this world, sank upon her spirit, and
consciousness grew dim within her, and care and sorrow seemed to die.

He who had been so cruel and so hard, sat silent in black gloom. The
stern and sullen mood from which had dropped but one fierce flash of
anger, still hung above the heat of his mind, like a dark rack of
thunder-cloud. It would have burst anew into a fury of rebuke, had he
but known his daughter was listening at the door, while the colloquy
went on. It might have flamed violently, had his tenant made any further
attempt to change his purpose. She had not. She had left the room
meekly, with the same curt, awkward bow that marked her entrance. He
recalled her manner very indistinctly; for a feeling, like a mist, began
to gather in his mind, and make the occurrences of moments before
uncertain.

Alone, now, he was yet oppressed with a sensation that something was
near him. Was it a spiritual instinct? for the phantom stood by his
side. It stood silently, with one hand raised above his head, from which
a pale flame seemed to flow downward to his brain; its other hand
pointed movelessly to the open letter on the table beside him.

He took the sheets from the table, thinking, at the moment, only of
George Feval; but the first line on which his eye rested was, "In the
name of the Saviour, I charge you, be true and tender to mankind!" and
the words touched him like a low voice from the grave. Their penetrant
reproach pierced the hardness of his heart. He tossed the letter back on
the table. The very manner of the act accused him of an insult to the
dead. In a moment he took up the faded sheets more reverently, but only
to lay them down again.

He had not been well that day, and he now felt worse than before. The
pain in his head had given place to a strange sense of dilation, and
there was a silent, confused riot in his fevered brain, which seemed to
him like the incipience of insanity. Striving to divert his mind from
what had passed, by reflection on other themes, he could not hold his
thoughts; they came teeming but dim, and slipped and fell away; and only
the one circumstance of his recent cruelty, mixed with remembrance of
George Feval, recurred and clung with