aching dissolution.

As he stood thus, the moonlight revealed a tall, well proportioned
figure, clad in a suit of black, well fitted to his form. His
prominent features and flashing black eyes were half concealed by a
large straw hat, which was carelessly placed upon his head. As he
gazed upon the sleeping form, his lips curled, and a strange
expression of exultation came to his face; his eye wandered
triumphantly to the fair brow of Edith.

"Twice rejected," he muttered half audibly--"twice rejected, and with
scorn, by yon dainty girl; now methinks my vengeance is almost within
my grasp. I hold her future destiny in my power; for this boy _cannot_
drag out his existence another week. Yes, Edith--to labor you have not
been bred--to beg you will be ashamed, and he who vainly hopes that
time will be granted him to deprive me of my inheritance, will perish
from my path, just as he believes himself on the verge of consummating
his hatred to me."

Edith softly arose, and making a sign to her mother, glided
noiselessly from the room by a distant window, which opened to the
floor. The intruder hesitated a moment, and then followed her with
light and rapid steps. The flutter of her white dress guided him to
the retreat she had chosen, and she had scarcely thrown herself upon a
rustic seat beneath the shelter of some orange-boughs, and given vent
to her painfully repressed emotion, by a burst of tears, when the dark
stranger stood before her. She started up and would have fled, but he
spoke, and the sound of his voice seemed to bind her to the spot as by
a spell.

"Why would you fly from me, Edith?" he asked. "I come in the spirit of
good-will to you and yours."

A struggle seemed to be passing in the mind of the young girl. She
wiped her tears away, and after a pause answered in a tone which
faltered at first, but grew firm, and even haughty as she proceeded,

"What has brought you hither, Mr. Barclay? Yet why do I ask? To exult
in the fate of your unfortunate victim; to watch each painful breath
which brings him nearer to his grave, with the certainty that the
very eagerness with which he desires a few more days of existence,
that he may fulfill a sacred duty, is fast wearing away the faint
thread that yet binds him to life. Oh false, unfeeling man! depart, I
pray you, if one human instinct yet remains within your callous heart,
and leave my unhappy brother to die in peace."

She turned to depart, but Barclay stepped