eaning of the deep
melancholy revealed by those furrows that traversed her fair brow. I knew
nothing of the past, to me the present was joy and happiness, and oh! the
future!--the dark, miserable future!--there was none! My only future was
to-morrow's play!"

Odile smiled bitterly and went on:--

"Sometimes I would happen, in my noisy play, to disturb my mother in her
silent walk; then she would stop, look down, and, seeing me at her feet,
would slowly bend, kiss me with an absent smile, and then again resume
her interrupted walk and her sad gait. Since then, sir, whenever I have
desired to search back in my memory for remembrances of my early days
that tall, pale woman has risen before me, the image of melancholy. There
she is," pointing to a picture on the wall--"there she is!--not such as
illness made her as my father supposes, but that fatal and terrible
secret. See!"

I turned round, and as my eye dwelt upon the portrait the lady pointed
to, I shuddered.

It was a long, pale, thin face, cold and rigid as death, and only luridly
lighted up by two dark, deep-set eyes, fixed, burning, and of a terrible
intensity.

There was a moment's silence.

"How much that woman must have suffered!" I said to myself with a pain
striking at my heart.

"I know not how my mother made that terrible discovery," added Odile,
"but she became aware of the mysterious attraction of the Black Pest and
their meetings in Hugh Lupus's tower; she knew it all--all! She never
suspected my father--ah no!--but she perished away by slow degrees under
this consuming influence! and I myself am dying."

I bowed my head into my hands and wept in silence.

"One night," she went on, "one night--I was only ten--and my mother, with
the remains of her superhuman energy, for she was near her end that
night, came to me when I lay asleep. It was in winter; a stony cold hand
caught me by the wrist. I looked up. Before me stood a tall woman; in one
hand she held a flaming torch, with the other she held me by the arm.
Her robe was sprinkled with snow. There was a convulsive movement in all
her limbs and her eyes were fired with a gloomy light through the long
locks of white hair which hung in disorder round her face. It was my
mother; and she said, 'Odile, my child, get up and dress! You must know
it all!' Then taking me to Hugh Lupus's tower she showed me the open
subterranean passage. 'Your father will come out that way,' she said,
pointing to the towe