d! they have poisoned him. My father--my father how could
you do it?" continued the girl, as she sank without animation on the
floor.

The vicar, whose brain reeled at the dreadful intelligence, had scarcely
power to move to the assistance of Emily, while McElvina, whose feelings
of horror were mingled with indignation, roughly seized Rainscourt by
the collar, and detained him his prisoner.

"I am so," calmly replied Rainscourt, who, stunned by the condition of
his daughter, the futility and blindness of his measures, and the
unexpected promulgation of his guilt, offered no resistance. "Had you
made your communication yesterday, sir, this would not have happened. I
surrender myself up to justice. You have no objection to my retiring a
few minutes to my bedroom, till the officers come--I have papers to
arrange?"

McElvina acceded; and Rainscourt, bowing low for the attention, went
into the adjoining room, and closed the door. A few seconds had but
elapsed, when the report of a pistol was heard. McElvina rushed in, and
found Rainscourt dead upon the floor, the gorgeous tapestry besprinkled
with the blood and brains of the murderer and the suicide.

One more scene, and all is over. Draw up the curtain, and behold the
chamber in which, but the evening before, two souls, as pure as ever
spurned the earth and flew to heaven,--two forms, perfect as ever nature
moulded in her happiest mood,--two hearts, that beat responsive without
one stain of self,--two hands, that plighted troth, and vowed and meant
to love and cherish, with all that this world could offer in
possession,--health, wealth, power of intellect and cultivated minds--
Joy and Love hand in hand smiling on the present--Hope, with her gilded
wand, pointing to futurity,--all vanished! And, in their place standing
like funeral mourners, at each corner of the bed, Misery,--Despair,--
Agony,--and Death!--Woe, woe, too great for utterance--all is as silent,
as horribly silent, as the grave yawning for its victim.

McElvina and Susan are supporting the sufferer in his last agonies; and
as he writhes, and his beseeching eyes are turned towards them, supply
the water, which but for a moment damps the raging fire within.

The surgeon has retired from his useless and painful task--habituated to
death, but not to such a scene as this.

The vicar, anxious to administer religious balm, knows that in
excruciating torture his endeavours would be vain, and the tears r