opher tells us that the splendour of colours which deck the
universe is not on the surface whereon we think to behold it, but in our
own vision; yet, take the colours from the universe, and what philosophy
can assure us that the universe has sustained no loss?

But when Audley came to that passage in the fragment which, though but
imperfectly, explained the true cause of Nora's flight; when he saw how
Levy, for what purpose he was unable to conjecture, had suggested to his
bride the doubts that had offended him,--asserted the marriage to be a
fraud, drawn from Audley's own brief resentful letters to Nora proof of
the assertion, misled so naturally the young wife's scanty experience of
actual life, and maddened one so sensitively pure into the conviction of
dishonour,--his brow darkened, and his hand clenched. He rose and went
at once to Levy's room. He found it deserted, inquired, learned that
Levy was gone forth, and had left word he might not be at home for the
night. Fortunate, perhaps, for Audley, fortunate for the baron, that
they did not then meet. Revenge, in spite of his friend's admonition,
might at that hour have been as potent an influence on Egerton as it had
been on Harley, and not, as with the latter, to be turned aside.

Audley came back to his room and finished the tragic record. He traced
the tremor of that beloved hand through the last tortures of doubt and
despair; he saw where the hot tears had fallen; he saw where the hand
had paused, the very sentence not concluded; mentally he accompanied
his--fated bride in the dismal journey to her maiden home, and beheld
her before him as he had last seen, more beautiful even in death than
the face of living woman had ever since appeared to him; and as he bent
over the last words, the blank that they left on the leaf, stretching
pale beyond the quiver of the characters and the blister of the
tears,--pale and blank as the void which departed love leaves behind
it,--he felt his Heart suddenly stand still, its course arrested as the
record closed. It beat again, but feebly,--so feebly! His breath became
labour and pain, his sight grew dizzy; but the constitutional firmness
and fortitude of the man clung to him in the stubborn mechanism of
habit, his will yet fought against his disease, life rallied as the
light flickers up in the waning taper.

The next morning, when Harley came into his friend's room, Egerton was
asleep. But the sleep seemed much disturbed; the