ders of the secret deeps; and the
sea-serpent, the huge chimera of the north, made its resting-place by
his side, glaring upon him with a livid and death-like eye, wan, yet
burning as an expiring seta. But over all, in every change, in every
moment of that immortality, there was present one pale and motionless
countenance, never turning from his own. The fiends of hell, the
monsters of the hidden ocean, had no horror so awful as _the human face
of the dead whom he had loved_.

The word of his sentence was gone forth. Alike through that delirium
and its more fearful awakening, through the past, through the future,
through the vigils of the joyless day, and the broken dreams of the
night, there was a charm upon his soul--a hell within himself; and the
curse of his sentence was--never to forget!

When, Lady Emily returned home on that guilty and eventful night, she
stole at once to her room: she dismissed her servant, and threw herself
upon the ground in that deep despair which on this earth can never again
know hope. She lay there without the power to weep, or the courage to
pray--how long, she knew not. Like the period before creation, her
mind was a chaos of jarring elements, and knew neither the method of
reflection nor the division of time.

As she rose, she heard a slight knock at the door, and her husband
entered. Her heart misgave her; and when she saw him close the door
carefully before he approached her, she felt as if she could have sunk
into the earth, alike from her internal shame, and her fear of its
detection.

Mr. Mandeville was a weak, commonplace character; indifferent in
ordinary matters, but, like most imbecile minds, violent and furious
when aroused. "Is this, Madam, addressed to you?" he cried, in a voice
of thunder, as he placed a letter before her (it was one of Falkland's);
"and this, and this, Madam?" said he, in a still louder tone, as he
flung them out one after another from her own escritoire, which he had
broken open.

Emily sank back, and gasped for breath. Mandeville rose, and, laughing
fiercely, seized her by the arm. He grasped it with all his force. She
uttered a faint scream of terror: he did not heed it; he flung her from
him, and as she fell upon the ground, the blood gushed in torrents from
her lips. In the sudden change of feeling which alarm created, he raised
her in his arms. She was a corpse! At that instant the clock struck upon
his ear with a startling and solemn sound: it