both despise and respect. And all these,
and much more, follow the step you would inconsiderately take, an
imprudent marriage."

"Audley Egerton," said Beatrice, lifting her dark, moistened eyes, "you
grant that real love does compensate for an imprudent marriage. You
speak as if you had known such love--you! Can it be possible?"

"Real love--I thought that I knew it once. Looking back with remorse,
I should doubt it now but for one curse that only real love, when lost,
has the power to leave evermore behind it."

"What is that?"

"A void here," answered Egerton, striking his heart.
"Desolation!--Adieu!"

He rose and left the room.

"Is it," murmured Egerton, as he pursued his way through the
streets--"is it that, as we approach death, all the first fair feelings
of young life come back to us mysteriously? Thus I have heard, or read,
that in some country of old, children scattering flowers preceded a
funeral bier."

CHAPTER XV.

And so Leonard stood beside his friend's mortal clay, and watched, in
the ineffable smile of death, the last gleam which the soul had left
there; and so, after a time, he crept back to the adjoining room with a
step as noiseless as if he had feared to disturb the dead. Wearied as
he was with watching, he had no thought of sleep. He sat himself down by
the little table, and leaned his face on his hand, musing sorrowfully.
Thus time passed. He heard the clock from below strike the hours. In the
house of death the sound of a clock becomes so solemn. The soul that we
miss has gone so far beyond the reach of time! A cold, superstitious
awe gradually stole over the young man. He shivered, and lifted his eyes
with a start, half scornful, half defying. The moon was gone; the gray,
comfortless dawn gleamed through the casement, and carried its raw,
chilling light through the open doorway into the death-room. And there,
near the extinguished fire, Leonard saw the solitary woman, weeping low;
and watching still. He returned to say a word of comfort; she pressed
his hand, but waved him away. He understood. She did not wish for other
comfort than her quiet relief of tears. Again, he returned to his
own chamber, and his eye this time fell upon the papers which he had
hitherto disregarded. What made his heart stand still, and the blood
then rush so quickly through his veins? Why did he seize upon those
papers with so tremulous a hand, then lay them down, pause, as if
to nerve himself, and look