, as
he bade his young friend good night.

CHAPTER XII.

CHARLES HOLLAND'S SAD FEELINGS.--THE PORTRAIT.--THE OCCURRENCE OF THE
NIGHT AT THE HALL.

[Illustration]

Charles Holland wished to be alone, if ever any human being had wished
fervently to be so. His thoughts were most fearfully oppressive.

The communication that had been made to him by Henry Bannerworth, had
about it too many strange, confirmatory circumstances to enable him to
treat it, in his own mind, with the disrespect that some mere freak of a
distracted and weak imagination would, most probably, have received from
him.

He had found Flora in a state of excitement which could arise only from
some such terrible cause as had been mentioned by her brother, and then
he was, from an occurrence which certainly never could have entered into
his calculations, asked to forego the bright dream of happiness which he
had held so long and so rapturously to his heart.

How truly he found that the course of true love ran not smooth; and yet
how little would any one have suspected that from such a cause as that
which now oppressed his mind, any obstruction would arise.

Flora might have been fickle and false; he might have seen some other
fairer face, which might have enchained his fancy, and woven for him a
new heart's chain; death might have stepped between him and the
realization of his fondest hopes; loss of fortune might have made the
love cruel which would have yoked to its distresses a young and
beautiful girl, reared in the lap of luxury, and who was not, even by
those who loved her, suffered to feel, even in later years, any of the
pinching necessities of the family.

All these things were possible--some of them were probable; and yet none
of them had occurred. She loved him still; and he, although he had
looked on many a fair face, and basked in the sunny smiles of beauty,
had never for a moment forgotten her faith, or lost his devotion to his
own dear English girl.

Fortune he had enough for both; death had not even threatened to rob him
of the prize of such a noble and faithful heart which he had won. But a
horrible superstition had arisen, which seemed to place at once an
impassable abyss between them, and to say to him, in a voice of
thundering denunciation,--

"Charles Holland, will you have a vampyre for your bride?"

The thought was terrific. He paced the gloomy chamber to and fro with
rapid strides, until the idea came across his